Dead Sea Turtle by Spence Guerin

Dead Sea Turtle, 1990 and 2011

oil on hardboard panel

13 x 19.5 in

Inv: SG-2100

The carcass of this dead loggerhead sea turtle, in early decay, was washed up on the shoreline at Melbourne Beach, Florida, on the coast of one of the biggest sea turtle nesting beaches in the USA. The artist hurried to set up his field easel next to the turtle on an incoming tide and kept him from drifting away as the waves washed him to and fro, moving higher up the sandy beach with the tide, wanting to finish the painting before sundown when he would surely lose the turtle to the outgoing tide in the dark. All work on the turtle and a sand-colored background was done on the beach during that one tide with the easel legs awash in the water. But the artist never liked that background. It seemed superficial. Twenty years passed, and in 2011, a few inches of the panel was trimmed off one side to improve the composition and the background repainted to what you see here, to give this image a more fitting, commemorative attitude. / Cause of the turtle's death is unknown. It is possible he had been caught and drowned in the net of a shrimp boat, as sometimes happens.