Troemel donates painting to Maritime Society

The First Light Maritime Society announced to local Historic City News reporters that this holiday season, their new member and America artist Jean Troemel, has made a special gift to the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum, Inc.

The gift is from Troemel’s personal collection of her own work entitled “The Storm”; a framed, original, oil-on-paper from 1969.

“We could not be more thrilled with this remarkable painting,” said Major General Gerald Stack Maloney, Board Chairperson, who was on hand to receive the work of art. “It’s almost like the view from atop the lighthouse during a stormy night,” Maloney continued. “We are so grateful to Jean for the gift of art and for her friendship.”

An extremely versatile and noted artist, Jean Wagner Troemel specializes in portraiture and landscapes. She is listed in the World’s Who’s Who of Women, the Worlds Who’s Who, the Directory of American Portrait Artists, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art, in London, England.

Five of her paintings, including an image of the St. Augustine Lighthouse, have been purchased by the Mennllo Museum of America Art, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

The St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, will add the painting to its small, but growing collection of works by other noted American maritime artists such as Scott Young and Robert Heuel. “We only accept and collect art-work of the highest caliber,” said Kathy Fleming, the Museum’s Executive Director.

“We are so happy to have Jean in our Lighthouse family and just as thrilled to have a piece of her remarkable art in our collection,” Fleming continued. “She has a wonderful feeling for the paint, and I personally love this moody oil that makes one feel the storm and the nervousness of the ship’s captain. The more you look at it the more you see. It’s really an appropriate piece for us because of its quality, because we study shipwreck archaeology, and because we are an acting weather station for NOAA.”

The painting depicts a tall ship approaching the harbor at Matanzas Bay, at the center of the “Nation’s Oldest Port” during a storm. Coastal ship traffic helped sustain St. Augustine over centuries, and many of those ships sank in just such a manner.

The remarkable painting of a ship approaching safe harbor will be on exhibition starting on December 26th in the Lighthouse Keepers’ House galleries at the St. Augustine Light Station.

For information about hours and admissions or to help support the work of the non-profit St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum, including preserving paintings like Jean Troemel’s for future generations, please contact the First Light Maritime Society by email by calling 829-0745.