🔍
Advanced Search

from the Wiscasset Newspaper, 2002-05-30: John Heagan Eames, 101, of Wiscasset died Friday, May 10 at Maine Medical Center in Portland surrounded by his devoted family. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts,July 19, 1900, and a graduate of Portland High School, he spent the early part of his adult life traveling between Maine, New York and Europe. He returned yearly to Boothbay Harbor and, for the past 30 years, lived in Wiscasset. His parents were Albert Melvin Eames Sr., and Amanda Kneeland Matthews Eames. Mr. Eames graduated from Harvard in 1922 and then attended the Harvard Graduate School of Architecture. He worked for almost ten years in New York architectural offices before traveling to London to study art. Eames worked in a tradition of painters and etchers that included James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Taylor Arms, Malcolm Osborne and Robert Austin. The last two were his teachers during the early 1930s at the Royal College of Art in London. He had an extensive list of exhibition credits going back to 1935, whichincluded the Royal Academy in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, theVenice Biennial, the New York World's Fair in 1939, among many others. His work is in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress and the Metropolitan Musuem of Art. In 1992 the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston honored the artist with a major exhibition of his prints and watercolors. He continued to exhibit his work, most recently in the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in London last year. Eames was a Senior Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and a member of the National Academy of Design. For the past three years, Mr. Eames had the distinction of leading the alumni procession at the Harvard commencement as the oldest attending graduate. Mr. Eames married Muriel McMicken in 1924. They spent their life together traveling in Europe to pursue interest in architecture and landscape as subject material for his painting and etchings, though returning yearly to the Boothbay region. Muriel Eames died in 1971. Survivors include a daughter, Consuelo Eames Hanks of Jefferson and her husband Ted Hanks; a brother, Albert M. Eames of Waldoboro; four grandchildren, Pebble Straw and her husband Lee of Newcastle, Robyn Holman of Auburn; Heather Page and her husband, Ray, of Scarborough and Ian Hanks and his wife, Jaime, of Portland; grandson-in-law, Carl R. Schwinn of Portland; great-grandchildren, Aran and Autumn Straw of Newcastle, James R. Chassereau of South Carolina, Audrey, Sophie and Muriel Schwinn of Auburn and Miranda and Skylar Page of Scarborough. He is also survived by several nieces, nephews and one great-great-grandchild. He was predeceased by two brothers, Butler M. Eames of Boothbay Harbor and Robert Eames. A funeral service was held on Thursday, May 16 at the Simmons, Harrington and Hall Funeral Home, Wiscasset Road, Boothbay. Burial will follow in the Village Cemetery in Jefferson following the service. The Rev. Robert Dorr will officiate. **************************************************************************************************************** MORE INFO: John Heagan [Jack] Eames attended Harvard School of Architecture, 1922 and the London, College of Art, School of Engraving. He was a pupil of Malcolm Osborne and Robert Osborne, 1933-37. He lived for many years in Wiscasset and his granddaughter, Robyn Holman, worked at Bates College, Lewiston, ME