Fred Messersmith, from 1984 to 1994 the director of Edgartown’s Old Sculpin Gallery and before that its artist in residence, died in his sleep at his home in DeLand, Fla., on March 23. He was 84. Last summer, a retrospective show of his work was a highlight of the Old Sculpin season. To honor him and his wife Jane for their decades of devotion to the association, a bench in their honor was set up outside the gallery facing the Chappy ferry dock.

It was just the right place for it, for it was on the Edgartown waterfront that the tall, lanky Midwestern artist who had fallen in love with the Vineyard, did much of his painting. He used the Edgartown harborfront and streets, too, as a classroom for the generations of students he gently, insightfully taught. Although he was primarily a representational watercolorist, Mr. Messersmith had also, over the years, used opaque casein on Japanese rice paper to paint more abstract works. These often showed the Vineyard’s sea and shore in moonlight. Indeed, he became known as something of a specialist in the use of casein, which, he said, gave softness and luminosity to a work. He also liked the absorbency and fibrous quality of the rice paper. Although he did occasional oil painting, Mr. Messersmith’s lifetime preference was for watercolor. Watercolor paints, brushes and paper were so much easier to transport and use on site than canvas and fat tubes of oil, he said.

Fred Messersmith was born on April 3, 1924, to Fred O. and Edith C. Hamilton Messersmith, in Sharon, Pa. The family home, however, was in farm country near neighboring Brookfield, Ohio. There his father worked as an auto mechanic and Fred spent hours in his boyhood tinkering with the cars in his garage. But Fred Messersmith’s mother who, herself, liked to paint, always had paints and paper on hand for him to play with when he came home.

In 1941, he graduated from Brookfield High School. Then World War II broke out and he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps aviation cadet program. Once he had received his wings and his commission as a second lieutenant, he began instructing in the flying of Liberator B-24 bombers in Liberal, Kansas. Although he wanted to be sent overseas, he proved so talented as an instructor in flying (as he would later prove to be as an instructor in art), that he was kept in the United States. Last year, at the Old Sculpin Gallery, he reminisced one afternoon about his love affair with airplanes, remembering how, when he was 10, a plane had landed in a hayfield near his home and the pilot had agreed to take the little boy for a ride for $2.

The war over, Fred Messersmith entered Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, where he earned both a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a master’s degree in art. He was a member of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity and of many honorary societies, including Delta Phi Delta and Omicron Delta Kappa. At Ohio Wesleyan he met Jane Paryzek from Shaker Heights. Although she was majoring in science, she was also taking art courses and six-foot-three-inch Fred Messersmith could not help but attract her attention. Last June, Fred and Jane Messersmith celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

In 1949, after college and graduate school, the young couple moved to West Virginia when Mr. Messersmith was hired to be chairman of the art department at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon. They remained there for 10 years with Fred using the mountains and coal mines and industrial plants as subjects for his art. In 1959 he was invited to Stetson University in DeLand to head its art department. There he also became a full professor.

In addition to his teaching and administrative duties at Stetson, he was kept busy painting portraits of the university’s presidents and of its buildings. He was also responsible for creating the presidential Christmas card each year. When Apollo I was launched in 1969, he was among the artists (longtime Chilmark seasonal resident Thomas Hart Benton was another) asked by NASA to document the launch by painting it. Both a watercolor and a collage he did are in the commemorative book, Eyewitness to Space. He often took his students to Italy to paint during those Stetson years and although there was little time for him to do his own painting there, he always made pen and ink sketches. He also sketched on trips to Ireland and Germany and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Upon his retirement as chairman of the art department in 1989, Mr. Messersmith became artist in residence at Stetson, a post he held until last year. In DeLand, the landscape of the east coast of Florida, the Intercoastal Waterway, the St. John’s River and the marshes were the preferred subject matter for his paintings.

In 1964 the Messersmiths discovered the Vineyard, lured by descriptions from the late Francis and Vivian Chapin, longtime Edgartown seasonal residents. Mr. Chapin had been artist in residence at Stetson during Mr. Messersmith’s term as chairman of the art department.

The Messersmiths spent their first Island holiday on Sengekontacket. Then they discovered the Mizzentop, a captain’s house with a widow’s walk on North Water street, and for the next seven years, they and their six children occupied its top two floors for two weeks each summer. The Mizzentop, now a senior citizen residence, was frequently featured in Mr. Messersmith’s paintings.

After that, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the family stayed with friends in Edgartown on their Island visits until, in 1987, they built their own house just off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road. Though most of his Vineyard time was spent with brushes in hand, he did take time off from his own painting and from teaching to play golf at the Edgartown Golf Course and Farm Neck and to proudly show off the Island to house guests by driving them up to Menemsha and Aquinnah on what were familiarly known as Fred’s Island Tours.

Fred Messersmith was a nationally known watercolor artist and was elected to the American Watercolor Society, the Florida Watercolor Society, the Alabama Watercolor Society and the Southern Watercolor Society. He was a member of the Watercolor Honor Society and is listed in Who’s Who in American Art.

He had one-man shows in New York city, London, Florence, Italy and the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Fla. On the Vineyard, in addition to the Old Sculpin, he had shown at the Field and Granary Galleries in West Tisbury. He has works in the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA, the Norton Museum of Fine Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, the Museum of Florida Art in DeLand, and at Stetson University. His work is also in hundreds of private collections across the country. A painting he did of shore birds is now part of the Mead Paper Company collection in Atlanta, Ga. In addition to having work appear in Eyewitness to Space, Fred Messersmith work appears in the books 100 Watercolor Techniques and Acrylic Watercolor Painting and has been featured in articles in the American Artist Magazine.

In addition to golf, Mr. Messersmith’s pastimes were playing the trumpet (with which he would gleefully awaken his family and any guests on occasional mornings) and acting in community theatre. When he was 80, to much acclaim, he played the male role in Love Letters at the Sands Community Theater in DeLand. In college, he had been active in the band and in theatre and his interest in both never left him.

He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Jane Messersmith and their six children, Fred Jeffery Messersmith of San Francisco, Linda Armour of Ormond Beach, Fla., Robert Messersmith of Gainesville, Fla., Harry Messersmith of DeLand, Patricia Turken of New York city and Mary Whitney of Point Reyes, Calif., and seven grandchildren, Bill Armour Jr., Nancy Enterline, Ben Messersmith, Molly Messersmith, James Turken, Bay Whitney and Ryland Whitney and three great-grandchildren, Lauren Armour, Nicholas Armour and Elizabeth Enterline.

A standing-room only celebration of his life was held on his birthday, April 3, at Trinity United Methodist Church in DeLand.

Contributions in his memory may be made to the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association, P.O. Box 761, Edgartown, MA 02539.