Maxwell Mays (1918-2009) American, Oil on Canvasboard. Depicts a small local festival, with people walking near a quaint gazebo-style carousel, a flying American flag, and a lake in the background. Signed and dated '78 bottom left. Framed.

Overall: 19 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. 

Sight: 15 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. 

Depth: 1 1/2 in. 

#3682 . 

Harry Maxwell Mays was born August 13th, 1918 in Providence, Rhode Island. His family was very well off, as his father had invented the metal pen clip that was the mainstay of the family business, the Mays Manufacturing Company. As a child Mays attended Saturday morning art classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, which gave him an advantage when he applied and was accepted to the school later on, graduating in 1941. He served in a map-making unit in Brazil during World War II, returning to Providence in 1946 where he began exhibiting his work at local galleries. His first one-man commercial show was at the Ferargil Gallery in New York in 1948. In the ensuing years he became notable for a number of highly successful art shows and magazine covers, including Yankee Magazine, featuring traditional New England scenes, and was a highly sought-after speaker and raconteur. Not only was he known as a benevolent wit who contributed to countless charities, events, and organizations in his hometown throughout his life, he also became a successful businessman as treasurer of the Mays Manufacturing Company until its sale in the mid 1980s. He became President and later Director Emeritus of the Providence Art Club, where the main gallery was renamed in his honor after he led the drive for a major restoration of the historic property in the late 1970s. Now remembered primarily in New England art circles, it was his whimsical and childlike birds-eye view depictions of Providence life that captured the imagination of the rest of the country in the mid 20th Century, with many works espousing patriotic and old-fashioned themes. He often signed his paintings without his first name, and with the “Ms” flipped upside down into “Ws,” which became his “signature bit of whimsy.” Mays received honorary doctorates from Rhode Island College and Johnson & Wales University, and was a lay minister for the United Methodist Church in Greene, Rhode Island for over 40 years. He was named an Honorary Rhode Island Commodore in 1986 by governor Edward D. DiPrete, and the Rhode Island Audubon Society still serves as caretakers of the Maxwell Mays Wildlife Refuge on his expansive family farm estate in Coventry, Rhode Island, which is estimated to have saved nearly a dozen bird species from extinction. Mays died at his home on November 16th, 2009.

Minor paint loss. Spotting throughout.