A band plays live music in September of 2024 before a backdrop of a refreshed Zoltan Sepeshy painting in the Beaver Island Print Shop Museum. (Courtesy photo via Escanaba Daily Press)

ESCANABA — “Hauling in the Net” is a massive painting now hanging in a new climate-controlled wing of the Print Shop Museum on Beaver Island. Painted by Zoltan Sepeshy in 1940, the 13÷-foot-wide mural, depicting three larger-than-life fishermen pulling a heavy catch into their boat, has had an eventful journey. A few years ago, individuals from Escanaba and Beaver Island teamed up to have it restored in Detroit, where conservator Kenneth Katz called it “one of the most important paintings by Sepeshy because of its scale and egg tempera technique.”

Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the federal government’s New Deal funded several programs to help America recover from the Great Depression. One such endeavor was the Section of Fine Arts, which commissioned upwards of 1,000 murals and 300 sculptures between 1934 and 1943, predominantly for installation in post offices and courthouses. Rather than provide work relief for those in financial hardship or complete necessary infrastructure projects, as other New Deal programs did, the Section’s goal was to secure the highest-quality art American creatives could produce. To this end, they had an unusual process; anonymous applications were chosen based purely on merit. Painter Zoltan Sepeshy, a Hungarian immigrant settled in the Detroit area and teaching at the Cranbrook Academy of Art was one artist selected and commissioned in 1939.

After arrangements had been made for Sepeshy to design a mural for the Lincoln Park Post Office, the artist submitted a couple sketch ideas, and the scene chosen reportedly surprised both Sepeshy and the community. As Lincoln Park is a landlocked suburb of Motor City with so many residents working for Ford, fishing was not a subject matter with a deep connection to the area.

“He presented several alternatives (for) what might have been an appropriate subject for the mural in Lincoln Park, and one of those proposals even had to do with the automobile industry. It was actually the U.S. government that came back and said, you know, they liked this idea of fishermen,” said Gregory Wittkopp, current director for the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research. “From, really, day one, the people in Lincoln Park and the postal employees were scratching their heads and wondering, ‘Why is this here?'”

By 1967, Acting Postmaster Melvin L. Gish was ready to remove or paint over the mural, at which point a neighboring businessman, Edward O’Donnell of Lincoln Products, stepped in.

With family ties to Beaver Island, O’Donnell knew where the mural would fit in well and be appreciated.

Beaver Island, the largest island in Lake Michigan, is in the Great Lake’s northern waters, south of Engadine in the Upper Peninsula and northwest of Charlevoix in the Lower. The island’s history involves an Odawa trading post, Irish Catholic settlers, a Mormon splinter colony, and plenty of fishing.

Noting that the proper channels were consulted and gave approval for the relocation of “Hauling in the Net,” which was still technically federal property, Wittkopp said that the move was supported by Senator William D. Ford and Representative Raymond F. Clevenger following O’Donnell’s suggestion. In 1967, the mural was installed in Beaver Island’s Print Shop Museum — so named because it was built by the Mormons in 1850 and used to produce their newspaper. Today, the building serves as the main museum for the Beaver Island Historical Society.

In 1976, a second museum opened on the island. Overlooking St. James Harbor, it had been built around 1905 as a shed to house fishing nets. Suitably, it became Beaver Island’s Marine Museum. At some point, the Sepeshy mural was removed from the Print Shop Museum and put in the lower level of the Marine Museum.

In 1991, the Lincoln Park Post Office moved to a new home, and the building that had originally housed the Sepeshy mural is now occupied by the Lincoln Park Historical Society as their museum.

Over the years, the mural sustained considerable damage, largely due to a poor cleaning job that had scrubbed away a lot of the color. When Lori Taylor-Blitz, who had been based in Escanaba, was hired to run the Beaver Island Historical Society eight years ago, the painting was a literally washed-out version of what it once had been.

Beyond the fact that the Marine Museum had no heating or cooling, it was very near the water — ideal for storing fishing nets, but not works of art. In 2018, an expansion was being constructed onto the Print Shop Museum. As the lake reached very high levels, preserving the painting became a top concern.

“The water was rising, so we needed to make a decision to have it taken down and stored for safety, because we really weren’t sure how much higher the water would go, and it just happened to fall within the timeline where we were doing this renovation,” Taylor-Blitz explained. “And we had the funding to make a decision about having it touched up.”

Pasqua Warstler, longtime Escanaba resident and formerly the executive director of the William Bonifas Fine Arts Center, had worked with Taylor-Blitz in the past on grant projects, and the two again formed a partnership in the mission to restore “Hauling in the Net” to its former glory. Warstler said that she flew out to Beaver Island several times to help work with Taylor-Blitz on arrangements and the details of a conservation effort, which they knew needed to be carried out by certified, knowledgeable professionals.

Ultimately, they hired Conservation and Museum Services out of Detroit. Ken Katz and Daniela Pianigiani were the experts who fit the bill. It was no small job, and the whole endeavor cost about $50,000, which Taylor-Blitz said they gathered through grants and private donors.

On Labor Day weekend of 2019, the mural was de-installed from the Marine Museum. In two pieces, the artwork was carefully loaded into crates, placed in a transport van, and carried across Lake Michigan on the Emerald Isle ferry to Charlevoix. From there, it traveled almost another 300 miles across the state to the studio of the Detroit conservators.

Because of the damaged state of the work, said Katz, they had “great incentive to return it to its original imagery and show what professional conservation can do.”

Professional conservators use a process called “inpainting,” wherein they touch up only the areas that are deteriorated or missing, covering up none of the original paint. It is fine, detailed, inch-by-inch work. Katz said that it was primarily Pianigiani who did the restoration on “Hauling in the Net,” which remained in their hands for the better part of a year.

“The challenge, not unlike the restoration of the Last Supper by da Vinci, was to integrate the massive losses incurred by the previous attempt at cleaning without covering any original paint,” Katz explained. “…It was all man-made damage by inexperienced people who did not understand Sepeshy’s technique and the nature of egg tempera and its extreme sensitivity to certain cleaning agents. Having worked on many Sepeshys, we understood what the challenges would be and were extremely satisfied and gratified with the results.”

Before it was brought back to Beaver Island, photographer Tom Benjamin took high-resolution images of the restored mural. Now, a full-scale printed reproduction hangs in the Lincoln Park Historical Museum — formerly the post office — right where the real thing was originally installed.

When the mural made its journey downstate temporarily, so too did a couple people involved with the project. Warstler and Taylor-Blitz visited the restoration studio, Cranbrook — where Sepeshy served as director not long after painting the mural — and even met Sepeshy’s son.

“Two dames from Escanaba fell in love with Zoltan Sepeshy and his egg tempera paintings and the whole story — and it’s a wonderful story,” said Warstler.

In August of 2020, the vibrant masterpiece was installed in its new home in the addition of the Beaver Island Print Shop Museum, roughly at the height at which it was intended to be viewed. There, it can be enjoyed for years to come.