Michael Coyne, a lifelong Scituate resident and professional mural artist

Michael Coyne of Scituate with his mural depicting legendary New England sports figures from the late 1800s to the present.


Boston sports legends come together on canvas
Take three self-confessed sports nuts devoted to the Boston sports scene and what do you get? A work of art with some 150 individual sporting tributes in portraiture on one massive mural.

more stories like thisMichael Coyne, a lifelong Scituate resident and professional mural artist who runs HawkMoon Studio out of his restored craftsman-style home on Mann Lot Road, has just finished a mural measuring 14 feet long and 4 1/2 feet tall that is testimony to the sports he, his partners, and sports-crazed New Englanders love.

"We're all sports nuts, the three of us," Coyne said of his partners, Michael Cooney of Scituate, a certified public accountant, and Thomas Reilly of Hingham, who owns an investment management company. "We'd never really seen anything like this depicting the Boston sports scene. Some bars have collages of photos, but not art."

The three joined on the mural idea and plan to split any profits, but Coyne isn't sure if he'll try to sell the mural; the plan is to market prints of it, and possibly a calendar.

The painting embraces Boston sports from the late 19th century to the present, depicting long-gone legends, like fighter John L. Sullivan, on the left, and continuing to today's heroes, such as the 2007 World Series champs Boston Red Sox, on the far right.

Winding its way from one end to the other is the Boston Marathon route. Subtle, lighter renditions of buildings are in the backdrop, including Fenway Park, the Boston Braves field, and Harvard Stadium.

The left side of the mural, showing Boston sports from long ago to the mid-20th century, is in sepia and black-and-white tones while the right half comes alive with bursts of color.

Coyne's main sporting love is hockey; an avid player himself, he's depicted the legendary icemen of the Hub, including Bobby Orr - whom he painted last on the mural, a tribute to his long-time idol. When he started the mural, Brockton boxing icon Rocky Marciano went up first.

"We spent a lot of time arguing about who should be on the mural," Coyne said of frequent meetings of the minds among the partners. "It was hard to know what to leave off as well as what to put on."

There are sentimental tributes; Boston Marathon legend Johnny Kelley, two-time winner of the event and record holder with 58 finishes, who died in 2004 at 97, is shown young and old on opposite ends of the piece. In the right-hand corner is the late Red Auerbach, Boston Celtic coach, president and pro basketball pioneer, puffing away on his ever-present cigar.

It's a male-dominated mural, with three female sports legends shown: track and field Olympian Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Olympic silver medal skater Nancy Kerrigan, and Marathon winner Joan Benoit. Francis Ouimet, winner of the 1913 US Open, and his young caddy, Eddie Lowery, are shown, a tribute to the game of golf that is the passion of his partners.

There are the older: Babe Ruth, Carl Yastrzemski, Phil Esposito, Larry Bird. There are the newer, Tom Brady, Keith Foulke, Roger Clemens. There is the uplifting: World-champion cyclist Marshall "Major" Taylor, a.k.a "The Worcester Whirlwind," who battled prejudice against blacks his whole life to excel in the sport he loved. And there is the tragic; under the words "The Impossible Dream," a label applied to the 1967 Red Sox, is Tony Conigliaro, his left eye horribly swollen from a beaning that effectively ended the promising young slugger's career.

Though the project took a year and a half, it isn't Coyne's biggest: Four years ago, he did a three-panel, 50-foot-long, 6-foot-high mural for a private client that was a timeline of American history. That took him more than three years to finish.

The partners hope this work, as yet unsold, leads to a cottage industry of sorts doing similarly themed pieces for universities and pro sports team. He said Harvard University has scommissioned a rendition of the history of its men's and women's hockey teams.

Coyne makes his living both as a muralist, painting scenes in hallways and living rooms of private homes, and as a painter of landscapes and seascapes. He said there was something special about creating a look at the huge world of New England sports, a project that after all the arguing back and forth among the three partners about who to include, "took on a life of its own."