PORTLAND, MAINE – The Winslow Homer painting Boys in a Pasture will be issued by the United States Postal Service on Thursday, August 12.

To celebrate the First Day of Issue, Portland Postmaster David C. Guiney and his staff will visit the Portland Museum of Art to unveil the stamp in a special ceremony beginning at 10 a.m. He will then present a framed enlargement of the stamp to the Museum.

Also to celebrate the occasion, a special pictorial postmark (pictured), designed specifically for this event, has been authorized by the US Postal Service. Portland Post Office staff will be on hand at the Museum from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to imprint visitors’ stamps with a “Winslow Homer Stamp Celebration Station” postmark. This postmark is a wonderful way to take home an inexpensive souvenir of this special event. Homer's Boys in a Pasture is the ninth stamp issued in the Postal Service’s American Treasures series.

Customers can request the special postmark free-of-charge by mail for 30 days after the event by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope containing the letter or envelope they wish to be cancelled to: Postmaster, 125 Forest Ave., Portland, ME 04101-9998. “We will be happy to cancel and mail back any letters that our customers mail in,” said Postmaster Guiney. “Customers may also bring in their own envelopes to obtain a postmark that they can take home as a keepsake.”

For more information, customers may call Postmaster David C. Guiney at (207) 871-8529.

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Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place is on view through September 6 at the Portland Museum of Art. Homer exhibited at the Museum in his lifetime and in the course of the 20th century the Museum has become a symbolic home for the artist. In honor of the centennial of Homer’s death, this exhibition showcases the Museum’s collection of Homer watercolors and oils on canvas. Featuring 28 works, it is the first time since 1988 that all of these works are on view in the Charles Shipman Payson Building.

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