Charles C. E. Lermond was born 28 September 1858 in South Hope, Maine, near the area where the coast meets Penobscot Bay. He was the son of Ephraim Lermond, a house painter, and Laura Boynton. Charles married his first wife, Ada Walker, of nearby Union, in 1877; it was probably then that he settled in Union. Ada bore three children before she died in 1887. Soon after Ada's death Charles wed Euda E. Brewer, a family friend who had tended Ada during her final illness. Euda, too, bore Charles three children. Lermond's granddaughter recalls him as a slight, quiet, mild-tempered man, who lived modestly. His income from painting was supplemented by Euda's earnings as a home nurse.
According to his granddaughter, Lermond never saw himself as a professional artist; his decorative scenes were produced in the course of his occupation as a painter of wagons, sleighs, and especially wooden chairs and other furniture (he later painted cars as well). Before settling in Union he painted houses, undoubtedly as an apprentice (with his younger brother, Augustus) to his father. In Union, Lermond painted on commission from the townspeople, who brought their possessions to his shop adjacent to his home on East Main Street. Lermond was active as a painter until a few years before his death in 1944 at age 86 in nearby Rockland. [This is an edited version of the artist's biography published in the NGA Systematic Catalogue]
Artist Bibliography
1992
Chotner, Deborah, with contributions by Julie Aronson, Sarah D. Cash, and Laurie Weitzenkorn. American Naive Paintings. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 244.