Photos: Coastal Maine in the summer

Set on a small knoll, the Olson House in Cushing, Maine, was originally described by Betsy Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth’s wife, as “looming up like a weathered ship stranded on a hilltop.” Today it maintains a defiant stance. Three stories tall, its clapboard silver-gray and weathered, it exists outside of time. For almost 30 years - from 1939 to 1968 - Andrew Wyeth, who became good friends with its owners, Christina and her brother Alvaro Olson, made himself at home here, setting up a studio in an upstairs room. He later remarked, “I just couldn’t stay away from there. I did other pictures while I knew them, but I’d always seem to gravitate to the house. It was Maine.”  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

In 1948, Andrew Wyeth was visiting the Olson farm in Cushing, Maine, when he gazed out the window of the farmhouse and saw Christina Olson dragging herself across the field toward the house. She suffered from muscular deterioration and couldn’t walk, and Wyeth was attracted to the image and began sketching it. “Christina’s World” was eventually purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and became his most famous work. The Olson House is now a museum, administered by the Farnsworth Library and Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. Its interior spaces are sparse and bare, as evocative today as they were for Wyeth some 60 years ago.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

Andrew Wyeth’s tombstone (1917 - 2009) is difficult to miss. It is located in the Olson family plot a short distance from the house in a small grove of oaks that overlook the St. George River.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

Evocative of another era, a gaff-rigged sloop works its way on the starboard tack across Boothbay Harbor. The region is famous for its antique wooden-hulled boats, which are often out in number on summer weekends. Andrew Wyeth valued Maine for timelessness. Along the coast, past and present seem intertwined, and from the water, this impression is inescapable.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

Located at the north end of Boothbay Harbor, the Linekin Bay Resort was established in 1909. It has 35 cabins and five lodges, as well as two tennis courts, a fleet of sailboats and a saltwater pool and is a throwback to the era following the Civil War when Maine coast became a popular summer destination for vacationers who valued the picturesque and rustic setting. These “rusticators,” as they called themselves, transformed not only the region but also the identity and economy of the state.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

Lupines grow in a small meadow on Damariscove Island at the mouth of the Sheepscot River. Once a fishing settlement and a Coast Guard Station, the island is owned by the Boothbay Region Land Trust. Nature trails, cut through the shoulder-high brambles, wind from a small harbor on the south side of the island to the eastern granite ledges and a large fresh water pond to the north. The island is habitat for more than 150 bird species, including herring gull, blue heron, common eider and osprey.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

Shaded by tall oaks, Al Moses’ home on Southport Island was built in 1870 for his great-grandfather by the parish of the local Episcopal Church. Moses, who is 67 and lives here year-round, says that winters are hard, but he will never move. From his front porch, he can see Monhegan Island to the east and the lighthouse at southern point of Southport, a place known as the Cuckolds. Moses is the unofficial caretaker of the cottage that line Pig’s Cove on the island.

---

FOR THE RECORD:
Coastal Maine: An earlier version of this caption said Al Moses is 68.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

The cottages at Pig’s Cove on Southport Island were built just above the high-tide mark and look east to Squirrel Island. At dawn, sunlight reflects off the water, blending both sea and sky. The still tableau is broken only by a breeze and the wake of a distant lobster boat working from trap to trap.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)

The Five Islands Lobster Co. on Georgetown Island serves seafood of all varieties -- lobsters, steamer clams, farm-raised mussels, scallops, haddock and clams -- mostly brought in off its dock. Among its specialties, though, are the Big Boys, lobsters weighing more than two pounds (and priced, on one June day, at $12.75 a pound), which are best enjoyed from a scattering of picnic tables overlooking the small harbor and the Sheepscot River.  (Thomas Curwen / Los Angeles Times)