A master of the luminescent style, Mr. Hee lived and painted in his Marsh Street studio in Beaufort, NC, where he retired after a life at sea. Mr. Hee served in the US Navy, and as a Miami-based cruise ship executive.
His life-long love of the sea led him to pick up a brush and study art with Leo Stitsky of Fort Lauderdale School of Art. His oil paintings often sold before the paint dried on the canvas.
"His deft brush work, use of color, shape and light, conveyed the ever changing drama and mood of the sea," said Raymond Voelpel of Tidewater Gallery in Swansboro. "Paul Hee established himself as one of America's finest maritime artists."
"Light-dazzingly exuberant, tranquilly evocative, or menacingly looming, Paul Hee's paintings are suffused with the world view of masters, but his work remains clearly and identifiably his own," said Paul Fontenoy, NC Maritime Museum curator and historian.
Inspired by Antonio Jacobsen, the prolific Danish artist, Hee researched vintage American and British ships to gain exact specifications and place steamships and sailboats in historical context.
His ships showed sails in tatters and anchor chains with rust, and often could be found in perilous straits from The Wreck of the Dutton, to The Sinking of Queen Anne's Revenge.
Mr. Hee mounted his last exhibit at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in 2009. His 152-page, hardbound book, Three Centuries of Seafaring: The Maritime Art of Paul Hee, was launched, featuring twenty years of his art.
"The maritime art of Paul Hee is an integral part of our history and culture," NC Maritime Museum Director Joseph Schwarzer wrote in the Foreword. "The book is appropriate to the Beaufort community and the town's tricentennial."
Many images in the book, like the epic Battle of Trafalgar, reflect works from private collections from New York to London. Local patrons loaned others, like Edna J. Lockwood at Back River Light and Massanuten Off Cape Lookout.
Mr. Hee captured Beaufort's storied port history in works such as Louisa Bliss Departs Beaufort for the Gold Rush, and CSS Nashville Runs the Beaufort Blockade, specially commissioned for the book.
These local scenes, along with portraits of Otway Burns' Snap Dragon, George Ive's Sharpie, and Maris, the swift sloop of Charleston's Carolina Yacht Club, are part of the Carolinas chapter, which showcases famous ships of the southeast Atlantic coast.
In a 2009 newspaper interview, Mr. Hee said he began painting images of schooners and steamships because he couldn't afford to purchase works by other maritime artists. He kept his prices low so many could enjoy his art.
A native of New York, Mr. Hee is survived by a son, Bruce, and daughter-in-law Maria, of Newport, NC.
