Construction of the Edmund Fitzgerald--Bow Framing

On February 1st, 1957, then President of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Mr. Edmund Fitzgerald, commissioned Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ecorse-River Rouge, Michigan to build what was, at the time, the largest vessel to ever travel the Great Lakes—the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Work began on August 7, 1957, and Fitzgerald’s namesake ship was launched June 7, 1958, and placed in service the following day. Coupled with this project was a second commission for Milwaukee’s premier industrial painter, Edmund Lewandowski, to create a series of three paintings: two documenting the construction, and a third of the completed craft on the water.

As a commission, the set was a bit of a departure from Lewandowski’s strictly Precisionist style, but nonetheless it featured a number of characteristics emblematic of the artist. He spent a great deal of time at River Rouge laying the foundation of the series, but true to his modern approach, he also worked from the numerous photographs he made while on-site. Similar to Charles Sheeler’s work at Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant decades earlier, Lewandowski created an extensive photo essay of the machinery, apparatus, and activity of the shipyard and its surroundings. And, like Sheeler, his photos would inform and direct much of his future work.

This series began with "Construction of the Edmund Fitzgerald—Bow Framing," a painting of the laying of the keel and framing of the giant vessel. This painting is emblematic of Lewandowski’s Precisionist style but adds the human element, with workers climbing a scaffold and fitting frame members together in place.

Courtesy of the Collection of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company