Mary Rosebee

The Bog Workers, ca. 1945
Signed (l.r.): Rosebee
Oil on paper board
16″ x 19 1/5″, 20 1/4″ x 23 3/4″ (frame)
Over-all in excellent condition.
Inscribed verso: “Oak Grove” “The Bog Workers” by Rosebee
Every Fall the Berries Ripen
Spirits of the Workers Heighten
Every Shack Around the Bog
Is Shrouded by the Smokey Fog
Berries Cooking for Juice and Jam
To be Eaten With the Holiday Ham
A Remembrance of Childhood on Cape Cod.”
Provenance: A San Francisco Bay area Collection, purchased from Peter Tillou Works of Art, Litchfield, CT, 2008.
This rare genre scene of “Bog Workers” by Mary Rosebee provides a snapshot of life on cape cod as remembered by Rosebee.
She was entirely self-taught. She picked up a paintbrush late in life because she wanted to create a visual record of her happy childhood memories. Her career took off quickly. By 1987, she had achieved national recognition when the Mystic Seaport Maritime Gallery named her the Most Promising Marine Painter in the Country. Her signature whimsical, nautical folk art style depicts New England village scenes, lighthouses, and coastal life, often accompanied by her original poetry on the back of the boards
Beginning around 1890, Cape Verdean immigrants settled in the Oak Grove section of Onset, arriving primarily to work in the regional cranberry bogs and maritime industries.