Historic New England Fall 2020

historic NEw england FALL 2020

Artful Stories

Annual Report Fiscal Year 2020

FALL 2020 • Vol. 21 • No. 2

historic NEw england From the President We often rely on written documents to investigate history, but there are other materials we can use for learning and discovery. For instance, art is an aesthetic account of the past, creative evidence of our predecessors’ ways of seeing, sensing, and being in their world. Whether it is inspirational or aspirational, sublime or ridiculous, evocative or provocative, art shows the range and depth of humanness. We use this vivid mode of storytelling to relate some of the many facets of the region and its people in the exhibition Artful Stories: The Paintings of Historic New England, on view at the Eustis Estate Galleries in Milton, Massachusetts.

This issue of the magazine—my first as president and chief executive officer of Historic New England—is devoted to Artful Stories. In a way, this exhibition showcasing forty-six paintings from our collection was nearly 300 years in the making. The oldest, a portrait of Boston’s Second Church minister titled Reverend Joshua Gee by John Smibert, is dated 1734-1736. The newest, which Richard Haynes made in 2018, is the representational portrait Cyrus Bruce. It depicts Haynes’s conception of Bruce, a servant of U.S. Constitution signer and governor of New Hampshire, John Langdon.

Creating and viewing a work of art are subjective practices; the mechanism for experiencing what the piece offers is a type of sharing. When art isn’t shared, its capacity to have an impact diminishes. Artful Stories fosters such an exchange between artist and observer and is one of the organization’s ways of sharing the New England past. Artful Stories presents the region’s unique sense of place and shares aspects of what it means to be a New Englander.

This issue also contains our Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2020.

Vin Cipolla

CONTENTS 01

Every Picture Tells a Story

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02

Artful Women

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ew England and the Old N World

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“ Those Wandering Thugs of Art”: Nineteenth-century Itinerant Painters

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Men in Black

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P ainting Landscapes: Science, Poetry, or Both?

raming Conventions Hold F Artists’ Intentions

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P ainterly Views: Artists, Architecture, and the Landscape

A nnual Report Fiscal Year 2020

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A n Early Tarbell

Creative Breakthrough: Battling Racism to be an Artist

HISTORIC NEW ENGLAND magazine is a benefit of membership. To become a member, visit HistoricNewEngland.org or call 617-994-5910. Comments? Email Info@ HistoricNewEngland.org. Historic New England is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Executive Editor: Diane Viera Editor: Dorothy A. Clark Editorial Review Team: Nancy Carlisle, Senior Curator of Collections; Lorna Condon, Senior Curator of Library and Archives; Leigh Schoberth, Senior Preservation Services Manager Design: Three Bean Press COVER Copy of Self-portrait of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Elizabeth Adams (1825–1898). Florence, 1865–1874, oil on canvas, 522 x 46 inches. Gift of the artist’s nephew, Boylston Adams Beal.

ABOVE Portsmouth Street Scene, William H. Titcomb. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1854, oil on canvas, 28 x 35f inches. Gift of Ralph May.

Historic New England 141 Cambridge Street Boston MA 02114-2702 617-227-3956

© 2020 Historic New England. Except where noted, all historic photographs and ephemera are from Historic New England’s Library and Archives.

Every Picture Tells a

STORY

by NANCY CARLISLE, Senior Curator of Collections and PETER TRIPPI, Editor in Chief, Fine Art Connoisseur and independent scholar

T

his issue is dedicated to our new exhibition, Artful Stories: Paintings from Historic New England, which debuts at the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts, in October and runs through autumn 2021. Historic New England is known by its members for many things, though we dare say few would include its paintings on a Top Ten list. At most of the properties, visitors see the paintings that adorn the walls, yet relatively little attention is paid to them because there is so much else to see.

Two-and-a-half years ago, we started looking closely at Historic New England’s paintings—those hanging in house museums and those in storage at the regional office in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The result of our research is Artful Stories: Paintings from Historic New England. Featuring forty-six paintings created between the 1730s and today, this show reflects what it is about New England—its architecture, landscapes, townscapes, and people—that imbues the region with its unique sense of place.

We hope you will enjoy viewing the exhibition at the Eustis Estate and before then, you are warmly invited to take a deeper dive into some of the paintings’ backstories by visiting eustis.estate/location/artfulstories/. There you will find enlargeable photographs of every artwork as well as comparative images and lively video and audio clips.

The exhibition and the website provide two opportunities to share our research, while this issue of the magazine offers complementary perspectives by an array of specialists who explore what else is noteworthy about Historic New England’s paintings. Dedicating an issue of the magazine to one topic is rare, but we hope you’ll agree that the variety of insights here—not to mention the beauty of the paintings—justify the exception.

Mary Elizabeth Cutting Buckingham, Mabel Stuart (1867– 1939). Wayland, Massachusetts, 1890–1896, oil on canvas, 22½ x 18½ inches. Gift of Edwin Buckingham Sears.

We are especially proud that several paintings in Artful Stories will be revelations not only to the public, but also to international experts who have spent decades studying those particular artists. Because Historic New England has not generally called attention to its fine art collections, some of its masterworks have been overlooked by colleagues more familiar with the collections of the region’s many art museums. We are also delighted that conservators have played such a crucial role in this project from its outset. All of the paintings as well as their frames have been treated or stabilized to look their best, and we are particularly grateful to our consulting paintings conservator Lisa Mehlin for her fascinating article here.

Beyond their visual charms, the paintings in Artful Stories offer compelling insights into what has made New England the distinctive place it is. As they say, every picture tells a story. During the imaginative programs to be offered at the Eustis Estate during the exhibition’s run, we eagerly look forward to learning what these pictures mean to you.

Historic New England gratefully acknowledges the support of the following donors in presenting Artful Stories: Dr. Janina A. Longtine along with Jeffrey P. Beale, The Felicia Fund, Jack Haley and Anne Rogers Haley, Robert and Elizabeth Owens, Mrs. George Putnam, Kristin and Roger Servison, Robert Bayard Severy, and Angie and Bob Simonds.

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Artful Women

W

hile researching the paintings in Artful Stories, co-curator Peter Trippi and I learned about a range of extraordinary New England women.

Some were the subjects of portraits while others were artists, collectors, or patrons. Here are a few of their stories.

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ARTISTS

by NANCY CARLISLE Senior Curator of Collections

ELIZABETH ADAMS (1825–1898) Copying the work of other artists is a time-honored way for painters to improve their own technique. Alas, most copies are painted over or destroyed. Few are framed, and even fewer make their way into museum collections. This one is an exception and the story

page 2 Copy of Self-portrait of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Elizabeth Adams. Florence, 1865–1874, oil on canvas, 52½ x 46 inches. Gift of the artist’s nephew, Boylston Adams Beal. right Man Whittling, Gertrude Fiske.

Massachusetts or Maine, c. 1935, oil on canvas, 36 x 29 inches. Museum purchase.

behind it is profound.

The copyist was Elizabeth (Lissie) Adams, a member of a distinguished Boston family whose parents believed that their daughters had as much right to an education as did their son.

They sent Elizabeth to a school for girls founded by the eminent educator George Barrell Emerson.

A former tutor in mathematics and philosophy at Harvard College, Emerson empowered his students to believe that women should cultivate their talents. For Adams, that meant becoming an artist.

In mid-nineteenth-century Boston there were no clear avenues for women who wanted to train as artists. While successful male artists took on male students, few took on females until William Morris Hunt began classes for women in the late 1860s.

So when Adams’s sister Annie and her husband, James T. Fields, went to Europe on their honeymoon in 1859, Lissie went with them. When the Fieldses returned home, she stayed behind.

Adams spent eleven years in Europe, mostly in Paris and Florence. In France, she joined the classes of painter Charles Joshua Chaplin, who was among the few who took on aspiring women. Like most female students, Adams no doubt paid twice what male students did and received half the attention. In Florence she could learn from the masters by copying their work. The Vasari Corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, newly opened

to the public in 1865, contained paintings by masters such as Filippo Lippi, Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Delacroix. Among them was the self-portrait of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Here, Adams could learn by copying the work of a female master. Vigée Le Brun (1755– 1842) was a successful French court painter whom Marie Antoinette favored. Adams’s career never reached the heights of Vigée Le Brun’s, but the quality of her work was acknowledged in 1885 when a painting she submitted to the annual Paris Salon was accepted.

By that time Adams had returned to the United States, and she and her life partner, Frances Burnap, had set up a home and studio in Baltimore where Adams

taught classes and continued to paint. Their home and their summer property in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, were, according to Adams’s biographer, places where like-minded friends gathered for lively conversations about art and literature. Adams died in Watch Hill in 1898. Her painting survives as a record of her affinity and respect for her artistic role model.

GERTRUDE FISKE (1879–1961) By the time Gertrude Fiske studied painting in the early twentieth century, hundreds of women in New England had had professional training. Like Elizabeth Adams, Fiske grew up in a well-to-do family in Boston. After graduating from a private girl’s school in the city she HistoricNewEngland.org

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spent a few years pursuing various sports and won the Amateur Golf Championship of Massachusetts in 1901.

It wasn’t until 1904, when she was twenty-five, that she enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston [the Museum School], studying with Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Benson, and Philip Hale. In 1909 she began working with Charles Woodbury at his Ogunquit Summer School in Maine. Woodbury’s style was distinctly different from the one taught at the Museum School—less rigorous and more fluid. By integrating the two styles, Fiske developed her own.

By 1916 she was a rising star. In the February 13 edition of the Boston Sunday Herald, art critic Frederick W. Coburn extolled, “Largeness and serenity of vision mark the work of this painter, only a few years out of the art school and already hailed as a probable celebrity.”

In addition to Boston, Fiske exhibited her paintings in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Detroit. She won a silver medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. She was admitted as an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1921 and became a full member in 1930.

While Fiske had success with landscapes and portraiture, it is her figurative work for which she may be best known. In the 1910s and early 1920s she painted the beautiful young women popular in the Boston School, a style of painting that had emerged by the beginning of the twentieth century. Practiced by Tarbell, Benson, and William McGregor Paxton, among others, it was characterized by exquisite craftsmanship and a love of beauty. But by the late 1920s and 1930s she had moved

on to models who were older, often New England archetypes—carpenters, soldiers, grandmothers. Fiske’s insightful character studies of older models in the 1930s were unusual at the time and her paintings of men were a departure from the Boston School tradition of portraying attractive women in beautiful settings.

An undated label on the back of Man Whittling from the National Academy of Design provides evidence that the painting was a successful submission. It is typical of Fiske’s best figurative work. The subject is brightly lit and sharply contoured; his lined face and darkly veined arthritic hands suggest years of physical labor.

PATRON

ANNA PERKINS PINGREE PEABODY (1839–1911) The marriage of Anna Perkins Pingree to Joseph Peabody in 1866 was an alliance of two of the wealthiest families of Salem, Massachusetts. Anna’s father, David Pingree, was a merchant prince and lumberman who owned vast tracts of land in New Hampshire and Maine. Anna grew up on Essex Street in the brick mansion designed by Samuel McIntire, now known as the Gardner-Pingree House. Joseph’s grandfather, also named Joseph, was a China trader and, until his death in 1844, the wealthiest ship owner in Salem.

It is not clear how quickly the marriage deteriorated.

In 1877 the couple purchased a mansion in Anna’s name on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay; by the late 1880s they had separated. Anna was still living in the Commonwealth Avenue townhouse at the time of her death in 1911. A complete inventory survives and tells something of her interests—French and American furniture, Persian rugs, bronze objets de vertu, extensive silver services, rich textiles at the windows, on the walls, on the pianos.

In many ways this house reflected the tastes of a number of families with Anna Peabody’s upbringing and resources. But it is her collection of paintings that sets her apart from most of her contemporaries.

One hundred sixteen works of art represent 20 percent of the value of her furnishings.

While more than half the artworks are not identified—listed as “12 assorted pictures,” for instance—of those that are, the majority were painted by Boston-trained artists who were still Venice, Hermann Dudley Murphy. Venice, c. 1908, oil on canvas, 31½ x 38 d inches. Gift of the Stephen Phillips Memorial Charitable Trust for Historic Preservation.

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living when Peabody purchased their work. These artists were working in a new style that was clearly influenced by the French impressionists.

Among her favorite painters was Hermann Dudley Murphy (1867–1945). Peabody owned between half a dozen and a dozen paintings by Murphy, who trained at the Museum School and the Académie Julian in Paris. He was strongly influenced by James Whistler (1834–1903), not only in his style of painting but also in recognizing the importance of the picture frame. Around 1899, Murphy began designing frames and before long, fellow artist Charles Prendergast (1863–1948), woodcarver Walfred Thulin (1878–1949), and Murphy established the Carrig-Rohane frame shop. The example that holds Murphy’s painting of Venice is typical of the shop’s work and marks a sea change from the applied flowers and leafage that covered earlier frames.

Around 1895, Peabody commissioned the construction of a summer cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine.

By 1906 she had a second summer home built in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a huge mansion called Floriana. No doubt both houses provided the wall space she needed to continue showcasing the work of her favorite artists.

SUBJECT

The students were the children of New England’s elite families who sent their girls to school to learn the refinement expected of the future wives of the region’s educated and successful men.”

One student in the early years was Beach’s younger cousin Mary, whose needlework survives in its original frame in Historic New England’s collection. While Mary completed the needlework, Beach most likely painted the faces and sky on this and other needlework produced at the school. According to several sources, including Lawrence Park, the early twentieth-century authority on Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Beach studied under the portraitist.

Stuart’s portrait of Beach was completed about twenty years after the founding of Mrs. Saunders & Miss Beach’s Academy. Beach was approaching fifty years of age. She is shown as she was described by one of her students—“a woman of much beauty and dignity.”

We don’t know who commissioned the portrait. Was it grateful parents, or was it Beach herself? In either case, the work is a rare example of an early portrait of a woman painted not because of her family’s prominence but because of what she had achieved.

Clementina Beach, Gilbert Stuart. Boston, 1820–1825, oil

CLEMENTINA BEACH (1774–1855) on canvas, 35½ x 30¾ inches. Museum purchase.

Clementina Beach emigrated with her family from England to Gloucester, Massachusetts, around 1793.

Renowned diarist William Bentley of Salem met Beach in 1799 and described her as “a young lady of accomplishments.” Judith Foster Saunders also lived in Gloucester, separated from her husband and teaching needlework to young girls. In 1803 the two women moved to Dorchester and opened a school. Mrs. Saunders & Miss Beach’s Academy on Meeting House Hill thrived for more than thirty years. In 1804 there were thirty-six boarders and twenty day scholars ranging in age from six to eighteen. A former student, Sarah Chauncey Cutts of Kittery, Maine, described her classes: “Beside the Latin and English classics and mathematics . . . in the course were music, penmanship, painting in water colors, map-drawing, done with pens—waxwork—and fine needlework in the shape of lace and silk embroidery—specimens of all, excepting the music, are in existence. Every nice point of etiquette was practically taught as only genuine ladies could teach, and underlying all— moral training—and a deep reverence for everything sacred—without affectation, or bigotry.”

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and the

NEW OLD England World

by PETER TRIPPI Editor in Chief, Fine Art Connoisseur and independent scholar

A

s a researcher of European paintings who grew up in Washington, D.C., and has long lived in New York City, I was an unconventional choice to co-curate Artful Stories: Paintings from Historic New England. Fortunately, I am not a complete stranger: my mother was born in Connecticut, my father spent boyhood summers in Massachusetts, and in 2013 this region’s rich history captivated me while attending Historic New England’s Program in New England Studies.

My role in Artful Stories was to be a sympathetic outsider offering perspectives that complemented those of my co-curator, Nancy Carlisle, who has so generously shared her deep knowledge of New England since we began collaborating in 2018. During our research, I cast a “cold eye” over the paintings and piped up when we spotted something that might be more highly esteemed by art historians than by historians of New England.

I have always been fascinated by how institutions accrue artifacts over many Homeward Bound, John George Brown. New York City, 1878, oil on canvas, 46½ x 36 inches. Gift of Ralph May.

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Sara Norton, Edward Burne-Jones. London, 1884, oil on canvas, 43¼ x 30¾ inches. Bequest of Susan Norton, the sitter’s niece.

generations. Historic New England’s collecting began at its founding in 1910, and through the intervening 110 years, some paintings—no matter how good—have been overlooked because there is so much else to admire inside its houses. Visiting many of the thirtyseven historic sites was a pleasure, but I was especially excited to explore with Nancy the storerooms at the regional office in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

There the very idea of generations of accrual is epitomized by row after row of metal racks, all covered with neatly organized paintings generally unrelated to those thirty-seven properties.

Looking afresh at them has stirred up exciting insights, and it is gratifying that the paintings in Artful Stories have been conserved, researched, photographed, and digitally catalogued to a high standard. The uploading of this data to Historic New England’s website guarantees their greater visibility and hopefully will stimulate conversations about some of their lingering mysteries.

Throughout Artful Stories appear

glimpses of New England’s longstanding ties with other places, but this theme is especially evident in the fourth and final section, The Wide World. Most readily appreciated by art lovers today is the relationship with France—the glamorous land that prompted in New Englanders a taste for Barbizon, then impressionist, and finally modern paintings. Naturally, Artful Stories rings the French bell often.

Many of the exhibition’s paintings reflect the connections to England that this region has sustained from the Mayflower onward. An unusual example is Homeward Bound, painted in 1878 by John George Brown (1831–1913). Born in England, he immigrated to New York in 1853 and ultimately set up in Manhattan alongside such better-remembered colleagues as Frederic E. Church (1826–1900) and Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902). By 1882 Harper’s Weekly could declare with some justification, “We have no more popular artist in America than J. G. Brown.” He found success with exquisitely painted scenes of working-class children on the streets of American cities. A typical example depicting a boy selling flowers hangs at Historic New England’s Merwin House in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Brown often depicted these “street urchins” alone or looking somber because he admired the sentimental, sometimes gut-wrenching, social realist art being made in his native land.

Charles Dickens had written about such children. Thanks to the steady flow of English art magazines to U.S. readers, Brown was not the only American to appreciate that British genre, either: indeed, it was one reason Winslow Homer (1836–1910) settled on the coast of northern England

to paint its long-suffering fisherfolk in 1881–1882. As his vision of a melancholy fisherman suggests, Brown had already undertaken a similar immersion by spending the summer of 1877 on Canada’s Grand Manan Island off northeastern Maine, a destination popular because of its picturesque scenery and hardy residents.

Brown seldom returned to England, but other Americans crossed the Atlantic regularly. The family of Harvard University Professor Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908) was cosmopolitan in the extreme; in fact his second child, Sara, started violin lessons not in Massachusetts, but in Germany at age seven during her family’s five-year European tour. In 1884 she accompanied her father to Cambridge, England, and posed in the London studio of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833– 1898) for one of his characteristically ethereal portraits. The friendship between their families is underscored by a photograph showing the artist’s daughter, Margaret, surrounded by Sara (Sally) and her sister Elizabeth (Lily) Norton.

It was customary for Burne-Jones to first paint a slightly smaller study of his sitter. In Haverhill, an unfinished one (showing Sara facing the other way) normally hangs on a rack beside the finished portrait. More surprising is the adjacent framed drawing of a woman, on which Burne-Jones scrawled “S.N. from E.B.J/Feb. 1869.”

As Sara was only five then, this must illustrate her mother, Susan Norton, still more evidence of the Nortons' long friendship with the artist. In 1884, Burne-Jones was internationally famous but in 1869 his art was still challenging for many viewers.

The drawing’s date confirms how HistoricNewEngland.org

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left Hera, Marie Spartali Stillman. Rome, late 1880s, watercolor, gouache, probably water glass (sodium silicate) on paper stretched on wood panel, 28¼ x 24 inches. Bequest of Susan Norton. below Richard Norton, Antonio Mancini. Rome, c. 1905, oil on canvas, 47 x 31½ inches. Both paintings bequests of Susan Norton, daughter of Richard Norton.

progressive Norton was in his taste: his advocacy of the Pre-Raphaelites (and the Aesthetes who followed them) inspired a generation of admirers in New England, including the Boston photographer F. Holland Day (1864–1933).

Burne-Jones was friendly with artist Marie Spartali Stillman (1844–1927), and our research suggests that the Nortons were, too. In 1990 Historic New England received a bequest of artworks from C. E. Norton’s granddaughter Susan, among them Stillman’s vision of a red-haired woman now identified as Hera, the Greek goddess of marriage and the family. Marie Spartali had modeled for, and studied with, England’s leading Pre-Raphaelite painters and photographers before marrying the American journalist W. J. Stillman and moving with him to Italy, where she favored the Renaissance portrait format seen here. This idealized vision of feminine beauty epitomizes the Aesthetic approach that captivated art lovers in both London and Boston throughout the 1870s and 1880s—a decorative, nonnarrative expression of “art for art’s sake.”

Stillman exhibited her work in America and Britain, and the label of a Philadelphia art dealer (Robert M. Lindsay) on the back of the frame reminds us that she had presented two other paintings at that city’s Centennial Exposition in 1876.

At the Haverhill storage facility near this portrait is a bustlength portrait of Sara Norton drawn in pencil by “Miss Lisa Stillman” (1865–1946), Marie’s stepdaughter and presumably a friend of Sara, her almost exact contemporary. Underwhelming in impact, the drawing is more interesting for the network of friendships it suggests than for its aesthetic excellence.

Stillman’s Hera was unknown to the leading experts on her before Nancy and I sent them photos. We also alerted specialists on Italian painter Antonio Mancini (1852–1930) to the survival of his dashing portrait of the archaeologist Richard Norton, Sara’s younger brother and fellow beneficiary of their family’s web of transatlantic friendships. Bequeathed to Historic New England by Richard’s only child, Susan, this large portrait was painted by Mancini in Rome, where “Dick” Norton headed the American School of Classical Studies.

Although he suffered from mental illness and could be difficult, Mancini was revered by sophisticates such as John 8

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above St. Servan Harbor, Edward Darley Boit. Dinard, Brittany, France, 1882, oil on canvas, 23 x 288 inches. Gift of Dorothy S. F. M. Codman. right Dreams of the Past, Jehan-Georges Vibert. Paris, mid-1880s, watercolor and gouache on paper, 43¼ x 34 inches. Bequest of Elizabeth Elwyn Langdon.

Singer Sargent (1856–1925), who collected his work and introduced him to patrons including Bostonians Isabella and Jack Gardner and Daniel and Ariana Curtis. Mancini’s handling was more expressive and abstracted than Sargent’s, so it was only the more adventurous Americans who commissioned portraits from him. Historic New England is fortunate not only to have Norton’s portrait, but also a unique photograph showing him resting during a sitting with Mancini. These sittings almost certainly occurred in the studio of their friend, sculptor Thomas Waldo Story (1854–1915), whose father was a Boston lawyer before moving to Rome to become a sculptor.

New Englanders were also collecting paintings influenced by French art, a story highlighted in the Land & Sea section of Artful Stories through superb American scenes inspired by the beloved Barbizon school of landscape painters. Less familiar today is the Frenchman JehanGeorges Vibert (1840–1902), once famous for meticulously painted scenes of resplendently dressed Roman Catholic cardinals engaged in humorous activities. Vibert’s following was strong in America and Britain, where there was a tradition of anti-Catholicism among the Protestant upper classes. Owned by Historic New England since 1966 is this outstanding watercolor previously unknown to Vibert experts, Dreams of the Past.

More progressive in technique is St. Servan Harbor, an atmospheric scene of Dinard, Brittany, painted in 1882

by Edward Darley Boit (1840–1915), who is remembered today primarily for the four charming girls depicted in Sargent’s renowned The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Though trained at Harvard Law School, “Ned” Boit spent much of his time painting landscapes, sometimes alongside Sargent. Because his wife, Isa, was wealthy, Boit did not sell art as energetically as his friend, which means his works are underappreciated today.

This scene confirms how thoroughly Boit had absorbed French impressionistic techniques; though descriptive of a particular place, it is also an elegant arrangement of abstracted forms that might have pleased Whistler or Monet. Boit gave it to his Dinard neighbor, Ogden Codman Sr., who brought it home to Massachusetts in 1884.

The Codmans’ Francophilia would continue in the next generation through Ogden Jr., who spent his boyhood in France and ultimately died there.

These and other paintings in Artful Stories remind us of the fascination that New Englanders have often felt encountering foreigners and the foreign. Be they mementos of experiences abroad or insights into other people’s very different lives, such images tell us more about ourselves than we might think.

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“Those Wandering Thugs of Art” Nineteenth-century Itinerant Painters

by JACQUELYN OAK Education Department, Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont

Itinerant Artist Scene, unknown artist.

Northeastern United States, c.1845, watercolor, 11½ x 15 inches. Museum purchase.

In earlier centuries artists depicted wealthy businessmen, clergymen, distinguished magistrates, and other members of the powerful elite. Folk painters democratized painting by picturing rural merchants; country doctors and lawyers; ship captains; artisans; and newly prosperous families, thus documenting a new social order. By the 1820s, members of a new middle class sought portraits of themselves in record numbers. John Neal, one of America’s first art critics, wrote about the proliferation of folk portraits in 1829: merican folk portraiture had yielded to “Already they are quite as necessary as the chief part changing tastes and new technology when of what goes to the embellishment of a house, and far Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. of Boston more beautiful than most of the other furniture.... You wrote about folk artists in the July 1861 issue have but to look at the multitude of portraits, wretched of Atlantic Monthly: “Recollect those wandering Thugs as they generally are.... You can hardly open the door of of Art, whose murderous doings with the brush used a best-room anywhere without ... being surprised by the frequently to involve whole families; who passed from picture of somebody plastered to the wall and staring at one country tavern to another, eating and painting their you with both eyes and a bunch of flowers.” way,—feeding a week upon the landlord, another week To meet the demand, coach, house, and sign painters upon the landlady, and two or three days apiece upon as well as talented (and not-so-talented) amateurs the children, as the walls of those hospitable edifices attempted to capture a “correct likeness,” the term most too frequently testify even to the present day.” often used by these artisan painters. Levels of formal Holmes’s criticism notwithstanding, hundreds of training, if any, varied greatly. A scant few may have folk painters documented the faces of middle-class studied the work of well-known, academic painters in Americans, producing works of art that have been urban areas; some learned from other contemporaries; studied and appreciated for decades. Moving from place still others had access to instructional art books and to place as demand dictated, these artists recorded manuals that were becoming available to the general thousands of likenesses of family, friends, neighbors, populace. As a result, the quality of the artwork differed political allies, business acquaintances, and strangers. In significantly. so doing, they created one of the largest bodies of work Working methods differed from artist to artist. Some in American art. traveled from town to town, advertising their services

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Sarah Bull Dorr and Colonel Joseph Dorr, attributed to Ammi Phillips. Probably Hoosick Falls, New York, 1814–1815, oil on canvas, 40 x 33 inches (both).

Gift of Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little.

in taverns and stores for only a few weeks' time; others established a base and sought business in neighboring areas close to home. Most, but not all, practiced their trade in rural areas where there was less competition.

Painting techniques and media varied among the artists, too. Those who had access to urban markets often used commercially prepared artist supplies. Others in more isolated, rural areas improvised with materials that could be purchased locally. It is no wonder that these conditions resulted in an enormously diverse group of paintings.

Historic New England’s recent acquisition of Itinerant Artist Scene, done by an anonymous artist, perfectly illustrates the working method of a traveling artist in the mid-nineteenth century. It also documents a “middling sort” of interior during this period. In a simply furnished kitchen, a boy sits somewhat patiently while an exceptionally well-dressed artist takes his likeness. The youngster casts a skeptical eye toward the painter as work progresses. Members of his family, shown in their best clothing, observe the scene. A cook, perhaps the grandmother, peels potatoes as she watches over the family. The furnishings of the kitchen—a drop-leaf table that serves as a work station, pewter plates, a ceramic bowl, and a “wag on the wall” clock—are typical of a middle-class, rural dwelling.

At the height of antique collecting in the twentieth century, no folk art collection was considered complete without a work by Ammi Phillips (1788–1865). One of the best-known and best-loved American folk artists, Phillips painted more than 900 likenesses in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont from about 1811 until shortly before his death. Born in Colebrook, Connecticut, Phillips first worked in western Massachusetts and then around Albany, New York,

during the first decades of the nineteenth century.

There is no evidence to suggest whether he received any formal art instruction. His early efforts are those of an amateur but by the second decade of the 1800s his skills had improved significantly.

The Dorr portraits are part of a group of family portraits Phillips made in Hoosick Falls and Chatham, New York, about 1814–1815. Joseph Dorr and his wife, Sarah, were prominent residents of Hoosick Falls. As a successful businessman who owned several mills, Dorr also served as justice of the peace, county judge, and as a colonel in the militia during the War of 1812. Phillips successfully captured the couple’s personalities in these uncompromising likenesses. The paintings are typical of his early approach—sitters with awkward anatomical details depicted on pale backgrounds. Sarah is in the costume of a prosperous matron, wearing a finely embroidered dress, an amethyst pin, and coral necklace.

She works on a piece of lace, her elbow on a round pedestal table. As suits his occupation as a businessman, Joseph is depicted next to a table that holds what appears to be his ledger book; in a pose Phillips typically used, the subject’s right hand rests on the back of a paint-decorated chair. His dark coat and vest contrast sharply with the pale background of the portrait.

The portrait of Edward Augustus Barrett shows a young boy similar to the lad pictured in Intinerant Artist Scene. Edward was the son of Charles Barrett Jr. of Historic New England’s Barrett House, in New Ipswich, New Hampshire. Edward’s portrait is attributed to Zedekiah Belknap (1781–1858), a Massachusetts native whose family moved to Vermont in the 1790s. Belknap studied divinity and theology at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1807. He reportedly preached only a few years before becoming a portrait artist. Working in the small towns and villages throughout Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts in a career that HistoricNewEngland.org

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Edward Augustus Barrett, attributed to Zedekiah Belknap. New Hampshire, 1815–1820, oil on wood, 26 x 21½ inches. Gift of Caroline Barr Wade.

“flat likenesses without shade and Sleeper-McCann House, a Historic shadow” for bargain prices, and New England property in Gloucester, “middling” efforts that combined Massachusetts. The original owner elements of both. The sliding of the house, Henry Davis Sleeper, scale of charges proved successful acquired the work in the early throughout his long career. twentieth century. Sleeper may have Portrait of a Young Woman been responding to a contemporary is typical of Prior’s economical aesthetic that valued the simplicity offerings. These portraits are usually of primitive paintings for their affinity of a small size and the sitter's face to the work of modern artists. and torso fill the frontal plane.

The work of itinerant portrait spanned more than forty years, Prior created this composition by painters offers a compelling glimpse Belknap produced approximately using flat areas of bright colors; into the lives of the provincial 170 paintings. the face, neck, hands, and clothing middle class of the nineteenth Several characteristics Belknap are made by the use of repetitive century. As French intellectual Alexis frequently employed are evident in shapes. Shading and contrasts de Tocqueville observed when Edward's portrait—the use of a wood are sometimes apparent, as they he visited America in the 1830s, panel as a support; the awkward are here. Prior relied on a formula “Democratic people may amuse rendering of anatomy resulting to execute likenesses quickly, themselves momentarily by looking in a rigid, stylized body; attention sometimes in ninety minutes, and at nature, but it is about themselves to facial features, often with often copied costume details that they are really excited.” heavy outlining in reddish brown; from likeness to likeness. In some intricate detailing in costumes and instances, he made up Portrait of a Young Woman, attributed to accessories; and dark background. accessories and props to William Matthew Prior. Pawtucket, Rhode It is somewhat unusual for a male embellish the image. Quickly Island, c. 1845, oil on academy board, 15d subject to be shown holding a applied brushstrokes, as seen x 11d inches. Gift of Constance McCann bouquet of flowers, but several other on this sitter’s dress, suggest Betts, Helena Woolworth Guest, and Frasier W. McCann. examples by the artist exist. depth and enhance the Working in Maryland, decorative composition. The Massachusetts, New Hampshire, model is wearing fashionable, Rhode Island, and his native Maine if middle-class, accessories of over a period of almost fifty years, the time—a neckpiece attached William Matthew Prior (1806–1873) by a brooch of Scottish painted likenesses of more than agates, gold earrings, and a 2,000 subjects, creating one of tortoiseshell comb. The artist the largest and most recognizable clearly focused his attention groups of images in American on her youthful, attractive face, folk art. His artistic training, if any, creating a pleasing image that remains a mystery. For Prior, art was undoubtedly suited his client. a business and he created likenesses Many of Prior’s to suit both his patrons' tastes portraits appear generic and pocketbooks. He advertised to contemporary eyes but extensively, indicating what often, as in this case, the customers could expect for a certain artist captured the sitter’s price—formal, polished portraits personality. The painting has that resembled academic paintings, hung for years in Beauport, the 12

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Woman Reading Under a Tree, Edward Mitchell Bannister.

Rhode Island,1880–1885, oil on canvas, 14s x 18s inches.

Museum purchase.

BREAKTHROUGH

CREATIVE

Battling Racism to be an Artist

by ROSALYN DELORES ELDER A registered architect, entrepreneur, artist, and writer, Elder is author of Exploring the Legacy, a book about African Americans’ contributions to Massachusetts and United States history.

E

DWARD MITCHELL BANNISTER LIVED AS A successful artist in New England during the late nineteenth century. He accepted commissions, painted, socialized with peers and taught art students, and in his leisure time, sailed his boat along Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Such normalcy would not stand out if it were not for the fact that Bannister (1828–1901), a Canadian immigrant, was black. Because of that single trait, the art world would have relegated him

to the margins of success. Instead, Bannister reached a singular level of distinction.

Being a black man in America could have consigned his career to mere survival at best and failure at worst.

Despite that reality, Bannister achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with a laser-focused determination, driven in part by his intention to disprove beliefs that people of African descent could not develop the aesthetic sensibility to create art.

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Edward Mitchell Bannister in a c. 1880 photograph taken in the studio of Gustine L. Hurd in Providence, Rhode Island. Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Sandra and Jacob Terner.

Deeply religious, Bannister considered the goal of the artist to be the spiritual expression of nature. He often tried to achieve in his paintings, as he said in an 1886 lecture, an affirmation of the harmony and spirituality in “all created things.” Bannister is best known for landscapes with picturesque motifs such as farming activities and livestock, sunrises and sunsets, cottages and castles, and small bodies of water. He also painted seascapes, religious scenes, still lifes, portraits and figure studies, and genre scenes.

When Bannister began his journey to becoming an artist, slavery no longer existed in the northern states, having been abolished by 1804. But freedom came with social, economic, and cultural constraints; blacks throughout the North created a life that was separate from but largely mirrored white society. They founded churches, established literary and choral groups, and organized mutual aid societies, which fostered cohesiveness within African American communities.

Entry into professions such as law and medicine was curbed by discrimination and segregation.

Those in the upper levels of the African American social spectrum possessed some degree of economic independence through selfemployment as barbers, wigmakers, caterers, leather-dressers, proprietors of used clothing stores, tailors, seamstresses, and retail store owners.

Creating art as an occupation was not a practical consideration for 14

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most African Americans.

Regardless of ethnicity, a successful artist needed steady access to clients with the means to commission work— usually portraits, still lifes, and landscapes to adorn their homes.

That necessity doomed many artists to fail; they simply did not have the connections to contract with wealthy clients.

Others who did make a living with their art were frequently members of the same social class as their clients.

Despite those barriers, Bannister pursued the calling that had taken hold of him during childhood. He was born in St. Andrews in New Brunswick, Canada, the first of two sons of Edward and Hannah Alexander Bannister. Young Edward was no more than six years old when his father died, leaving Hannah to bring up him and his younger brother, William. Hannah’s encouragement of young Edward’s creativity fueled his desire to become a practicing artist.

Hannah died in 1844, before her sons came of age. The youngsters boarded with the family of Harris Hatch, a well-to-do white lawyer. The Hatches also encouraged Edward’s artistic explorations, and it was in their household that he developed an appreciation for classical music and literature. It was also probably there that he acquired the mannerisms of a quiet, determined

gentleman that impressed all who met him later in life.

In about 1848, Bannister relocated to Boston, where his brother had moved earlier, and worked in a variety of jobs. In 1853 he applied for a job as a barber in a downtown hair salon owned by Christiana Babcock Carteaux (1819–1902), a prosperous entrepreneur. Working as a barber put Bannister in the higher echelons of African American society. He could support himself and pursue self-guided art studies, the route he had to map out because racism barred him from the traditional path of apprenticeship and travel to Europe. He attended the Lowell Institute, which in 1850 opened a free drawing school, in keeping with its 1836 founding mission of offering public lectures and courses to Boston citizens regardless of gender or ethnicity. Bannister participated in

exhibitions at the Boston Art Club, too. This afforded him opportunities to associate with others in the art community. Bannister understood well that participating in exhibitions with his peers was critical as he developed his skills.

In 1854, Bannister received his first landscape commission, The Ship Outward Bound. He did receive portrait work, but focusing on landscape painting allowed him to stand out among the artists in his community. Black portraitists had to compete with their white counterparts for a limited African American clientele. Two black painters in New England who focused on portraiture were William H. Simpson (1818–1872) and Nelson A. Primus (1842–1916). Both worked in Boston; Primus even studied for a short time under Bannister.

In 1857, Bannister and Carteaux wed. Besides being a successful businesswoman, Carteaux, who was from North Kingstown, Rhode Island, was a philanthropist and an abolition activist with ties to the Remond family of Salem, Massachusetts. The Remonds were known internationally as leaders of the movement to end slavery. Promoting herself as “Madame Carteaux, Hair Doctress,” she was also a wigmaker and owned at least four salons, including one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another in Providence, Rhode Island.

Madame Carteaux catered to elite clients, black and white. Her salons also served as meeting places for black and white abolitionists.

After marrying, Bannister’s life entered a phase of relative financial stability and he could devote himself to working as an artist.

He acknowledged the essential role his wife took in helping him establish his career, writing in his

later years: “I would have made out very poorly had it not been for her. … My greatest successes have come through her.” One of his portraits is a captivating likeness of Christiana (see page 16), fashionably dressed, which hangs in the RISD Museum in Providence.

The 1860s was a crucial period of creative growth for Bannister. He frequently visited local art galleries, including the Boston Athenaeum, where he came to admire the work of the painters who gathered in the French village of Barbizon, among them Jean-François Millet, Constant Troyon, and American artist William Morris Hunt. The Barbizon school, as it came to be known, emphasized the intimate and poetic quality of nature. Bannister spent a year in New York City studying photography and returned to Boston in 1863.

By that time, he had developed a reputation as an up-and-coming artist, meriting an entry in the biographical encyclopedia by author William Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. Brown proclaimed it “commendable” that the artist “has thus far overcome the many obstacles thrown in his way by his color, and made himself an honor to his race.” He also expressed certainty that Bannister, “still young, enterprising, and spirited,” was destined to “create a sensation in our country as an artist.”

Bannister engaged socially as well as professionally with other black artists throughout his career. He and portrait painter William H. Simpson sang in a community choir. When sculptor Edmonia Lewis relocated to Boston in 1864 to pursue her artistic career after her horrific experience with racism at Oberlin College, he mentored the newcomer by showing

her how to be a more successful vendor of her work at abolitionist fundraising events.

Some of Bannister’s interactions with African American peers were not so collegial, however. Nelson A. Primus, mentioned earlier, believed that Bannister could have done more to assist him in moving his career forward. Primus wrote his mother in 1864: “Mr. Bannister, I think, is a little jealous of me. He says that I have got great taste in art but does not try very hard to get me work. … Mr. Bannister has got on with the white people here, and they think a great deal of him. He is afraid that I would be liked as much as himself.”

A pivotal moment came in 1867 when Bannister read an article in The New York Herald that stated, “The Negro seems to have an appreciation of art while being manifestly unable to produce it.” The disparaging remark not only angered Bannister; it also intensified his artistic drive and he became determined to disprove the racist myth.

In 1870, the Bannisters moved to Providence, where they quickly became prominent members of the city’s black elite. Again, Bannister established himself among his fellow artists. He helped found the Providence Art Club in 1880 and in 1885, the Ann Eliza Club.

Membership in the city’s community of creatives also provided Bannister with a layer of insulation against the prejudice and discrimination that all blacks experienced in America.

In 1876, Bannister entered Under the Oaks in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. It captured a winning medal. The revelation that a black man had painted this work of art sent shock waves through the exposition crowd. The judges HistoricNewEngland.org

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Christiana Carteaux Bannister. Probably Boston, c. 1860, oil on panel, 35 x 25f inches. Gift to RISD Museum by the Edward M. Bannister Foundation.

wanted to withdraw the award, but pressure from Bannister’s white peers allowed it to stand. Two decades later, Bannister recounted the event to journalist T. Thomas Fortune, who wrote a profile of the artist in The New York Sun: “I learned from the newspapers that ‘54’ [Under the Oaks] had received a first-prize gold medal, so I hurried to the committee rooms to make sure that the report was true. There was a great crowd there ahead of me. As I jostled among them, many resented my presence, some actually commenting within my hearing, in a most petulant manner, ‘What is that colored person in here for?’ and similar discourteous remarks. Finally, when I succeeded in reaching the desk where inquiries were made, I endeavoured to gain the attention of the official in charge. He was very insolent. Without raising his eyes, he demanded in the most exasperating tone of voice, 'Well, what do you want here anyway?

Speak lively.’ ‘I want to inquire concerning ’54. Is it a prize winner?’

I replied. ‘What’s that to you,’ he said. In an instant my blood was up; the deprecatory looks that passed between him and others in the room were unmistakable. I was not an artist to them; I was simply an inquisitive colored man. His manner suggested a nature so small and petty that I could not bring myself to his level. Besides, the thought flashed through my mind, ‘Why give this man a chance to express his prejudice?’ So, controlling myself, I said deliberately: ‘I am interested in the report that “Under the Oaks” 16

Historic New England Fall 2020

has received a prize; I painted the picture.’

“An explosion could not have made a more marked impression.

Without hesitation he apologized, and soon every one in the room was bowing and scraping to me.”

A “Mr. Duff of Boston” purchased Bannister’s painting for the significant sum of $1,500. To date, the location of Under the Oaks is not known.

Bannister is often associated with the tonalist movement, which emerged from the Barbizon artists’ taste for muted coloring, subtle contrasts of light and shadow, looser and less precise draftsmanship, contemplative—almost poetic—

moods, and prioritization of calm, seemingly ordinary scenes over famous or dramatic ones. His painting in Historic New England’s collection, Woman Reading Under a Tree, is a testament to his virtuosity.

He probably painted it outdoors in the countryside near Providence, where he often brought his students to study nature. In this scene, the artist effectively evokes the heat and humidity of a summer’s day, deftly guiding the viewer around the composition to ultimately settle on the massive trunk of the oak tree at center. Although it is comparatively small, this jewel-like work of art is one of the highlights of the Artful Stories exhibition.

The Boston Harbor Islands Project: Prince Head, Peddocks Island, Joseph McGurl (b. 1958). 2020, oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches. Cavalier Galleries.

PAINTING LANDSCAPES:

Science, Poetry, or Both?

by JOSEPH MCGURL Award-winning landscape painter based in Cataumet, Massachusetts. McGurl is currently painting scenes of each of the thirty-four islands in Boston Harbor.

T

he 1820s and 1830s witnessed the birth of the first truly American approach to painting, the Hudson River School, whose leaders—including Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)—prioritized the landscape. Until then, landscape art had ranked low in the hierarchy

of subject matter because it did not illustrate stories or convey moral lessons. Around this time, however, a flood of scientific discoveries began competing with religion, tradition, and myth to offer insights on how the universe works. Soon landscapists were moving toward a new realism in which nature no longer functioned merely as

a stylized backdrop.

The Hudson River School epitomizes this bridging of painting, science, philosophy, and religion. Its adherents drew inspiration from such New England Transcendentalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, who found spirituality in nature and HistoricNewEngland.org

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left Mount Chocorua, Benjamin Champney. Boston or New Hampshire, 1860, oil on canvas, 283/16 x 38f inches. Gift of the estate of Jane N. Grew. page 19 Harbor at Sunrise, unknown artist. France, 1860–1880, oil on panel, 138 x 11 inches. Gift of Dorothy S. F. M. Codman.

Emerson disappeared; in luminist painting, the artist’s hand disappeared as the surface became smooth and perfectly blended. As luminism’s name suggests, light became the dominant feature, clear and sharp.

Luminist paintings are distinguishable by their stillness, sparse and open compositions, receding spaces, and the sense of well-being they impart to viewers. We also rarely see human figures in them. a basis for philosophical meaning meteorology, geology, botany, and It is helpful to consider this underpinned by scientific facts. In topography. Back in the studio they exhibition’s painting of Mount Chocorua his influential book Cosmos: A Sketch were transformed with sensitivity into (in the Sandwich Range of New of a Physical Description of the Universe an inspired melding of science and Hampshire’s White Mountains) by (published in five volumes between art. It was seen as critical to include Benjamin Champney (1817–1907), 1845 and 1862) German naturalist abundant details in order to glorify who was closely associated with two Alexander von Humboldt used his nature’s beauty and to demonstrate the prominent luminists, Fitz Henry Lane scientific expeditions of the Americas artist’s understanding of the scene.

(1804-1865) and John F. Kensett to help explain how the universe works A subset of the Hudson River (1816–1872). In this scene—most based on scientific knowledge. He School were the luminists, who did not likely painted in the studio from believed that artists should study their represent a clearly defined philosophy sketches made on location—several subject with the intensity of a scientist or style. Like the Transcendentalists, markers of luminism are apparent. The and translate it with a poet’s sensitivity. they believed that immersing oneself in weather is clear, the light crisp, the sky Arguably the key American expression nature was the best way to experience a gentle shade of blue, and the water of this approach is Heart of the Andes God’s presence. This required solitude, calm and reflective. The composition (1859) by Frederic E. Church (1826and light was particularly significant. features deep recession, and a peaceful 1900), who based his South American Emerson states in his 1849 essay stillness is imparted to the viewer, excursion on Humboldt’s experiences “Nature” that “There I feel that who senses that something sublime there. For Church, an artist’s scientific nothing can befall me in life,—no is occurring. The tree at the left is curiosity and desire to understand the disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me painted with Humboldtian accuracy, scene were just as important as the my eyes) which nature cannot repair. as one sees in other Hudson River and painting method.

Standing on bare ground,—my head luminist scenes.

Many American artists followed bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted A telling juxtaposition can be made Church’s lead, spending more time into infinite space,—all mean egotism with Woman Reading Under a Tree by sketching from nature to obtain vanishes. I become a transparent Edward M. Bannister on page 13. first-hand knowledge of their subject eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the Bannister, who is generally associated matter. Often painted on cardboard currents of the Universal Being with tonalism, an outgrowth of the or paper, their sketches were not circulate through me; I am part or Hudson River School influenced partly seen as artworks but as ways to particle of God.” by the Barbizon school in France, gather information about a location’s While meditating in nature, where several practitioners (though 18

Historic New England Fall 2020

not Bannister) had studied. I see tonalism as a reaction against the precise brushwork and scientific accuracy of the Hudson River and luminist movements. Its adherents were equally concerned with light, but its more aesthetic, sensory effects. Tonalist paintings often emphasize brown and gray tones rarely found in nature, making them more of an aesthetic statement based on harmonies of color than a literal representation. In order to “get away” with their deviations from nature’s actual coloring, tonalists bypassed detailed rendering of features in favor of suggestiveness. Had they not, viewers would have perceived only strangeness—as if the artist’s vision was obscured by a colored ether. In paintings like Bannister’s, viewers instead realize that the objects and colors are not exact representations, but poetic interpretations.

Another work in the Artful Stories exhibition that particularly appeals to me is Harbor at Sunrise, made by an unknown artist. For several years I have been interested in trying to replicate the sensation of bright sunlight reflected on water. It was probably made on location: it looks like it was painted “wet on wet”—in one session, before the paint had a chance to dry for subsequent layers or reworking. The composition is sparse and the subject is simply light on water. The fascinating thing about painting this effect is its elusiveness. You cannot touch reflected light, as it has no weight. If you change position, it disappears. As a shape it’s fairly stable, but its details are in constant motion. It is composed of photon particles, which are incredibly small and elusive.

The challenge for the landscapist is to alter the adjacent values, colors, and proportions in such a way as to make white paint appear to dance and glow with the intensity of sunlight.

There is yet another challenge that I, as a contemporary plein air landscape painter, must confront. Broadly speaking, my career is dedicated to depicting the earth. But this consists of just a tiny section of the universe that I myself can experience, understand, and interpret in paint. This interaction is subject to the limitations of my senses, and I regret, for example, that a grain of sand has many layers I cannot observe. String theory asserts that sand— indeed everything in the universe—is composed of vibrating strings of energy, and the way they vibrate dictates what kind of particle they are. The Big Bang theory states that at the beginning of the universe, everything—including that grain of sand, you, me, and a distant galaxy—was compacted into an ultra-dense mass of energy. This means that ultimately, every part

of the universe is connected. The particles of which we are composed exploded from this singularity alongside particles that now compose a supernova a billion light years away.

Alas, I can paint only the small part of this reality, what I experience with my senses. This is one of the aspects that makes us human—our unique set of senses. It also gives significance to the minor and anecdotal elements in a landscape painting. That grain of sand is as valid as any other feature in the universe. The result is that I regard all aspects of my landscape paintings as having equal importance. I attempt to subvert my ego and let the painting be about my observations. This is accomplished by recreating the scene with a fidelity to actual appearance, rather than imposing my personal style. I also attempt to recreate the tactile and multidimensional characteristics of the elements. Different features are rendered with varying techniques, textures, or glazes to more fully describe those elements’ individuality.

I let nature, with all its complexities, come forth as I become Emerson’s “transparent eye-ball.”

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PAINTERLY VIEWS: Artists, Architecture, and the Landscape

by RICHARD C. NYLANDER Curator Emeritus, Historic New England

Portrait of a Man, John Greenwood. Boston, c.1750, oil on canvas, 55 x 43½ inches.

Gift in memory of Lawrence Park.

F

rom its beginnings in 1910, preserving this region’s architectural heritage has been central to Historic New England’s

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mission. In addition to its collection of historic buildings, architectural drawings, and photographs, a less well-known collection presents another view of the region’s

architecture. It comprises paintings, watercolors, and sketches illustrating the mansions, vernacular houses, farms, churches, hotels, mills, and even the fishing shacks that were part of the fabric of the New England landscape. The motivations for creating these works varied—recording a historic landmark, creating a portrait for a house-proud owner, recalling or memorializing a family homestead, capturing an image of a derelict building before it collapsed, or perhaps simply creating a pleasing composition. Some are by professional artists, others by amateurs; some are correct in every detail, others are probably idealized, but all capture something of the New England sense of place.

Some of the earliest depictions of New England buildings were painted in the large panels over the fireplaces in eighteenth-century houses and as the backgrounds of early portraits. The landscape vignette that John Greenwood (1727–1792) included in his c. 1750

right John Hancock House, Charles Furneaux. Massachusetts, 1859, oil on canvas, 22½ x 16½ inches. Museum purchase. below Salem Street (Wells-Adams House), Susan Minot Lane.

Boston, 1881, oil on canvas, 13 x 16 inches. Museum purchase.

paint the rear of the building, which Porter called “the most picturesque part of it” having “all the features of an old New England farm-house.” The portrait of an unknown man clearly painting is one of a series Lane places him in Boston’s North End. made of North End houses in their The towering steeple belongs to the declining years, before they were famed Old North Church. In front of swept away a decade later for new it is an impressive three-story house construction in this rapidly changing with a projecting front porch and a section of the city. rooftop observation deck. Following The Hancock House has become eighteenth-century conventions in one of Boston’s most recognized portraiture, the house most likely eighteenth-century buildings. belonged to the sitter. But who is he? Although razed in 1863, its image has One suggestion is Thomas Newman, been perpetuated in photographs, who advertised selling imported engravings, ceramic tiles, and textiles “at his Dwelling House . . . calendars as the story of the near the Rev. Dr. Cutler’s Church attempts to preserve it continues [Old North].” Certainly, wearing such into our own time. When the granite a richly brocaded waistcoat would house was built in 1737 on the crown suit a merchant dealing in expensive of Beacon Hill, it was surrounded by textiles. open fields. This painting by Charles

Furneaux (1835–1913) illustrates how drastically the landscape had changed as land became more valuable and the city encroached.

A typical brick Boston bowfront house now appears behind the house and the golden dome of the State House can be seen through the tree on the right. Furneaux was a drawing instructor in the Boston area who later went to Hawaii and became well known for his paintings of volcanoes. The year the Hancock House was demolished, he advertised himself as a “photograph colorist.” Indeed, this painting appears to copy many of the details of one particular photograph of the building, even to the window on the second floor that is just cracked open.

Of House and Home While many buildings were demolished to make way for new structures, others like those in the

Venerable Abodes In the late nineteenth century “ancient” buildings like the one Greenwood depicted appealed to artists and antiquarians alike because of their great age, their character, and the stories they could tell. And none in Boston were more appealing than the relics found in the North End. Edward Griffin Porter in his Rambles in Boston, New England (1887) called the WellsAdams House on Salem Street the “largest and most complete example, both in front and rear, of a wooden dwelling of the seventeenth century, remaining in Boston.” In 1881 Susan Minot Lane (1832–1893) chose to HistoricNewEngland.org

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Portsmouth Street Scene, William H. Titcomb. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1854, oil on canvas, 28 x 35f inches.

Gift of Ralph May.

numerous outbuildings necessary to support every aspect of the farming operation. Wooden fences and stone walls separate gardens, pastures, the orchard, and the family cemetery. More than thirty different animals inhabit the place. While the painting depicts a successful mid-nineteenth-century farm, it may be a romanticized view. A somewhat enigmatic entry in a Chandler genealogy states that the red house with the diamond-paned windows had been “recently rebuilt in imagination” by a descendant, this writing is being converted to suggesting that what Sawyer painted condominiums. may have been based on a memory of an earlier house on the site and Working the Land not what he actually saw in 1858.

New England’s agricultural These are but a few of the landscape is well represented in paintings of houses of different the painting by James J. Sawyer periods in Historic New England’s (1813–1888) of Chandler Farm in collection. To see more, visit Pomfret, Connecticut. The 114-acre HistoricNewEngland.org, click on the farm had been passed down through Explore tab, and select Collections. several generations of the same You can search for “houses” or family, each making improvements “buildings” in the Art category. to the land and buildings. The You will be surprised by what you main house is surrounded by the discover.

street scene in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by William Titcomb (1824–1888) survive as a reminder that some remain vital parts of the urban landscape because they have been repurposed to adapt to changing cycles of desirability and development. The mid-eighteenthcentury gambrel-roofed Purcell House in the center became a boarding house soon after the death of the original builder. When this painting was made in 1854 the house was again a private residence, but half a century later it was Chandler Farm, James J. Sawyer. Pomfret, Connecticut, 1858, oil on canvas, 41 x 55 threatened, and like many others inches. Gift of Mary B. Holt. at the time, was saved by the local historical society. It is known today as the John Paul Jones House after its most famous boarder, the Revolutionary War naval hero. The three-story brick mansion built for merchant Woodbury Langdon in 1793 appears on the right. Converted to a hotel in 1830, it was rebuilt as the elegant Rockingham Hotel after a disastrous fire in 1884 and is now condominiums. The 1845 Gothic Revival Glen Cottage, glimpsed through the trees on the left, has also seen many changes and as of 22

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IN BLACK Portrait of an Upholster, Franciscus Cuypers. Boston, 1852, oil on canvas, 46 x 41½ inches. Museum purchase.

F

ashion history tends to favor one end of the gender spectrum. Masculine clothing has traditionally received little attention from scholars, perhaps because so many men appear in variations on the same theme: a dark three-

piece suit. It’s hard to get excited about a wool two-button coat when scholars can tackle divisive subjects such as high heels and corsets. Gender is performative.

Clothing plays a key role in staging that action, but offers far more than a social mask to those who

by LAURA E. JOHNSON Curator

engage it. Rather than considering the four portraits discussed here as standard depictions of power and authority—the stereotypical man in a black suit—they can give the viewer interesting details about social constructions of identity.

Depicted nailing an elaborate covering on a carved chair, the unknown upholsterer painted

by Dutch-born artist Franciscus Cuypers (1820–1866) meets the viewer’s gaze casually and comfortably. He is posed informally, cradling the chair in his knees with hammer in hand, wearing a spotless white shirt and a swath of apron around his waist. His shirt is typical of the early 1850s, with a hidden button placket down the center front flanked by pleats. His pants are good black wool, draped at the knees from wear but not threadbare or patched. His black, asymmetrically knotted necktie is fastened in the latest fashion. A black necktie was a somber choice in the early 1850s, when men often mixed plaids, stripes, and dots in eye-searing combinations; he most likely purchased his clothing ready-made from one of the many warehouses in Boston. Ready-made clothing, available to some as early as the eighteenth century, was one of the fastest-growing businesses in HistoricNewEngland.org

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Portrait of a Cape Ann Builder, Alfred J. Wiggin. Salem/ Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1848, oil on canvas, 30¼ x 25 inches. Gift of Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little.

carriage passing in front of a house, which the sitter presumably built, with a classically inspired doorframe and an elaborate white fence surrounding the yard. This conventional portrait formulation contrasts starkly with Cuypers’s informal and inviting depiction, one reinforced by the sitter’s clothing.

The men’s three-piece suit, standard business attire even today, was introduced in 1666 by England’s Charles II a few years after his reinstatement to the throne following a nine-year exile in France. His dress attempted to return political stability to the kingdom by visually reinforcing his support for domestically produced woolens. His fashionable patronage of English suits did not last long. Within a few years Charles resumed more elaborate sartorial choices, many derived from French fashion.

Men could, if they chose, be peacocks in the mid-nineteenth-century America. eighteenth century. Masculine attire embraced silks, The upholsterer’s choices—or Cuypers’s, as the embroidery, and powdered hair. While American men viewer cannot be certain—point to a craftsman typically did not dress in extreme French styles, many preserving both his livelihood and his refined cut fine figures in silk, linen, and velvet. It was not until appearance. The informal setting, with tools tucked the end of the eighteenth century, with a series of social into a leather strap tacked to the wall as the only and political upheavals around the Atlantic World, that detail, confers a documentary gloss to this precisely fashion embraced what remains today the standard constructed image. This portrait is often highlighted masculine silhouette: long pantaloons cut close to the as one of the few depictions of a craftsman at work, leg, vest, and coat all cut from the same (or similar cloth), but a careful analysis of his dress points to a more worn with a collared shirt. Many fashion historians formal depiction than previously thought. Cuypers’s trace the popularity of this style to notable dandy Beau upholsterer illustrates the care with which portraiture Brummell, whose friendship with the Prince of Wales allowed clients to craft their own visual identity. and constant presence in London society popularized The upholsterer makes an excellent comparison with his particular—minimal—approach to masculine dress. the portrait of an unknown Cape Ann, Massachusetts, Brummell actively rejected the elaborate costume of builder that Alfred J. Wiggin (1823–1883) completed court society, arguing for a wardrobe similar to that worn four years earlier. Both subjects are highly skilled

by English gentry while in the country. Brummell was craftsmen who chose to be portrayed holding the tools fastidious about his appearance, reportedly spending of their trade, dressed in immaculate shirts and black more than an hour arranging his cravat, but he cut a neckerchiefs, but there the similarity ends. Wiggin vigorous line in his ensembles. depicts the Cape Ann builder as a formal, conservative The American man who wished to appear both craftsman. His coat, vest, and pants are all of dark wool, genteel and stylish—for Brummell had helped to make ready-made but good quality. He wears a black silk personal style a desirable attribute for men—chose a stock and tie, knotted in the more conservative style mixture of these elements for his dress. One garment for the late 1840s, with his collar points cradling his had a decidedly different origin. The banyan, a loose chin. His pleated shirt closes down the front with pearl robe with long sleeves, was worn open over a shirt and studs. In a nod to both fashionability and affluence, a vest. Typically donned at home and in lieu of a coat, gold watch key—used to wind the pocket watch he most banyans entered European fashion at the end of the likely has tucked into a vest pocket—hangs from a ribbon seventeenth century by way of trade with India. Men around his neck. Through the window one glimpses a such as Boston Mayor Harrison Gray Otis, chose to have 24

Historic New England Fall 2020

many could afford the tailors and The only other hint of personal flair expensive textiles required to is his pocket square. The effort it maintain that lifestyle. took to look casually disarranged By 1906, when Wallace was perfected by Brummell and Bryant (1870-1953) painted Henry unfurled by fashionable men over Davis Sleeper, men’s personal the following century. expression could take a wide While it might seem extreme range of approaches. While to focus on details such as pocket his career as one of the first squares, it is by examining how American interior decorators these trends changed over time had yet to take shape, Sleeper that we can better understand was clearly crafting his personal how men created and refined their style. Like Otis, Sleeper appears personal presentations against interrupted in study, his thumb the backdrop of American social, themselves portrayed in banyans tucked into a book. Other decorative political, and economic change. to signify their social status. Otis elements remind the viewer of his Quoting nineteenth-century French wears a banyan made from dark interests: an antique chair, books, writer Stendhal, fashion historian wool or silk and lined with fur in and framed artwork behind him John Harvey once asserted, “Dress, his 1809 portrait by Gilbert Stuart reinforce his scholarly, refined like painting, consists of values made (1755–1828). Depicted at the height nature. Sleeper’s clothing confirms it: visible.” Fashion is not frivolous or of his political career, Otis appears a striking red tie stands out against superficial. It lies at the heart of how comfortably reclined, as if Stuart had his dark suit, echoed in the oxblood we craft our individual and collective gently interrupted his work to ask a vase on the table and the damaskselves. Portraits are insight made question. Otis wears his expensive upholstered chair in which he poses. manifest. banyan over a white shirt, stock, and top Harrison Gray Otis, Gilbert Stuart. Boston, 1809, oil on panel, 43 x 35. knotted cravat. His shirt frills are Museum purchase. below Henry Davis Sleeper, Wallace Bryant. Boston, crimped and fluffed beneath a white 1906, oil on canvas, 60s x 66¼ inches. Gift of Steven Sleeper. waistcoat. A hint of crimson damask upholstery on the carved chair Otis has pulled up to his desk confirms both wealth and refinement.

The rise of ready-made clothing emporiums in the 1830s and 1840s offered a wide range of suits to a new class of city-dwelling young men. Clerks in banks, stores, and offices needed affordable yet genteel clothing that communicated their reliability and honesty to employers. This rise of what would become a nearly generic signifier for the middle-class working man paralleled an entirely different form of male fashionability: the dandy.

Dandies (men who dressed to fashionable extreme) always formed a crucial part of the social scene but few American men chose to have themselves portrayed as such. Not HistoricNewEngland.org

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by LISA MEHLIN Painting conservator and owner of Mehlin Conservation

FRAMING CONVENTIONS Hold Artists’ Intentions

W

hen we look at a painting, the structure of the work is the scaffolding behind the stage. The artist usually does not want us to be aware of it. Most paintings are a complicated effort to fool the eye into seeing something that is not there. Paintings are executed on a two-dimensional surface, but attempt to make viewers believe they are seeing something three-dimensional, like a landscape, or a portrait. But when we understand this complex relationship between the very real ingredients

26

Historic New England Fall 2020

in a painting and the illusory result, we start to truly appreciate the complexity and subtlety of the artistic effort involved.

Oil paint started gaining popularity in northern Europe in the fifteenth century. Paintings were initially executed on wooden panels, but by the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy, artists started painting on woven hemp cloth, which was also used for sailcloth in Venice and thus readily available.

This cloth, when stretched, survived the heat and humidity of southern Europe far better than wooden

panels, which warped and cracked.

This technology also enabled artists to paint much larger works than previously possible. As painting on canvas moved north into France and the Netherlands, hemp was replaced by linen, which was available locally and much more durable. To this day, Belgian linen is considered one of the best materials for painting canvases.

This woven cloth was stretched onto a stretcher—which usually could be expanded at the corners—and secured with "keys" in the corners, allowing for tensioning of each side

} page 26 Detail of a painting in a private collection showing the results of a failing ground layer. The unprimed canvas can be seen where the paint has flaked off. right Drawings show cross sections of the layers of a typical panel painting and a painting on canvas. Drawings by Bruce Blanchard.

independently. This enabled the artist to tighten the canvas like a drum and to adjust it over time as the canvas expanded or contracted due to changes in humidity.

Because this cloth was absorbent, it was important to "size" the canvas, usually with a dilute rabbit skin or hide glue, which was applied warm after stretching, then allowed to dry. Next, a ground layer, usually calcium carbonate and dilute animal glue, would be applied over the sized canvas in order to prepare a foundation for painting. Ground layers form the central layer of the painting, and many issues with painting condition can be traced to failures in this layer. It is vital that the ground layer adheres properly to the underlying canvas and that the subsequent layers of oil paint adhere properly to the ground.

After this, the paint was applied.

Traditional oil paint is composed of ground pigments often derived from naturally occurring minerals like siennas and ochres, called earth pigments, but also semiprecious stones like lapis lazuli, which makes ultramarine blue. These would be ground into linseed or walnut oil and applied to the canvas in layers.

These layers would then have glazes applied over them, which used added medium or varnish and thin layers of pigments to build up a sense of depth and atmosphere.

After the painting was finished and allowed to dry, it would be varnished. The varnish was usually made from a natural resin like dammar or copal, which was dissolved in turpentine and applied

PAINT LAYERS VARNISH GROUND GLAZE SIZE

}

CANVAS PAINT LAYERS GROUND SIZE CANVAS

} evenly to the surface of the painting.

This varnish would saturate the colors of the painting and protect it as well.

When looking at paintings, we can tell something about the techniques used by the artist to make us think we are looking into a threedimensional scene. Do architectural elements in the painting recede into the background? Is there a vanishing point (the area where parallel lines seem to meet on the horizon line)? Are the colors applied to make things appear round, with no perceptible edges? Is there a light source, and if so, from where? Does the painting appear to have been built up in layers of glazes, giving it atmosphere and depth?

We can also see if a painting has condition issues that are making the structural elements more evident than they were intended to be. If a painting is distorted, or has tears, paint loss, or damage, its illusory effect is lost. If it has paint loss, and the area underneath the loss shows white or gray, the flaking is probably being caused by a lack of adhesion between the paint and the ground layer, because the ground

}

VARNISH GLAZE PAINT LAYERS GROUND VARNISH OR GESSO GLAZE PANEL PAINT LAYERS

layer is still visible. This is usually GROUND because the ground isOR composed GESSO of something that the oil paint is incompatible with. ForPANEL example, during the Victorian period, artists were experimenting with new materials and often prepared their ground layers with wheat starch instead of animal glue. These starch layers, after many decades, start to turn powdery and disintegrate.

They also absorb water, which can make the layer swell and can actually start to push the paint layers away.

Paintings with starch grounds can have catastrophic paint failures, even looking like popcorn on the surface.

Even regular grounds can be problematic, often because they were made by hand and the recipes differed so much. Many issues with ground layers have to do with the proportion of animal glue to calcium carbonate. Severe lifting and cracking can be caused by a ground layer made with too much animal glue. Likewise, too little glue can cause the ground layer to become powdery and fail. Many contemporary oil painters use prestretched commercial canvases with an acrylic ground layer instead HistoricNewEngland.org

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Barnyard Scene, Sunset, Thomas Hewes Hinckley (1813–1896) [Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1848. Bequest of Dorothy S. F. M. Codman] before treatment in raking light, showing the “cupped” surface and raised edges of the cupped paint. On the right is the painting in normal light after lining, showing the effect of reduced surface deformations, making it easier to “read” the image.

of oil. These two types of paint are incompatible and can cause major issues, even in new paintings.

Because canvases are stretched, and thus are under tension, the paint layers above the canvas are under tension as well and tend to crack over time in response to mechanical stresses. Typically paintings will crack more at the corners, because this is where the stresses are most pronounced. This is called "craquelure" and is a normal part of the aging of the painting. But when this cracking becomes extremely severe, either due to a very heavy paint layer, a canvas that is too thin, or of poor quality, the painting can become “cupped”—where the paint forms large concave patches across the surface. This is often accompanied by loss of paint at the intersections of the planes, where small triangles of paint start to detach. If one were to look at the back of a painting in this condition, one would see that it exhibits “quilting”—showing an uneven surface like a quilt that 28

Historic New England Fall 2020

corresponds to the cupped areas on the front.

When a painting is exhibiting extreme cupping, with quilting on the back and paint loss on the front, one traditional method to address it has been to line the painting to a new fabric support. This may seem counterintuitive—why would a new backing fabric help the issues with the paint on the front? The reason is that the real cause of the failure is an inadequate support fabric and accompanying problems with the ground layer. Attaching a new foundation fabric with an adhesive that impregnates this ground layer, all while under suction and heat to flatten the cupping on the front, successfully addresses the problem.

Lining paintings is a controversial subject, and there has been severe backlash to an extreme campaign of lining paintings that happened in the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in many paintings becoming flattened and losing all impasto (texture) and surface character. These linings were often undertaken using a form of

wax resin under heat and pressure, which impregnated not only the canvas and ground layers but also the paint, darkening it permanently.

Wax linings are extremely difficult to remove. Nowadays, linings are only undertaken as a last resort and done with reversible materials and significantly less pressure and heat, so the impasto on the surface is retained.

Artwork can seem fragile when considering painting structure and potential failures of structure.

However, most condition issues with paintings have to do with the use of incompatible materials or inadequate quality of the component parts, not to mention the vagaries of poor storage or accidents. These elements are not what the artist intended us to focus on, but rather what they hoped we would not see. However, looking more deeply into paintings, we can see the scaffolding behind the stage and learn to appreciate its structure.

That understanding can actually enhance what we see.

Annual Report

Fiscal Year 2020 (April 1, 2019-March 31, 2020)

HistoricNewEngland.org

29

WELCOME We closed Fiscal Year 2020 at the end of March in an unprecedented place. Having nearly readied the organization to pass the leadership torch to a new president and chief executive officer on June 1, we were thrust, along with the rest of the world, into a new reality. Fortunately, our dedicated staff brought the full scope of its creativity and talent to bear in addressing the challenges posed by COVID-19. We cannot foresee the future, but history offers us valuable lessons from the past, and keeping it alive and sharing it with the broadest possible audiences benefits us all. Our mission to save and share the history of New England has never been more urgent and more relevant.

We entered the past budget year with great expectations, and we have a solid list of accomplishments to highlight across all areas of our work. We published Everything for the Garden, the latest volume in our pictorial history book series, which garnered two awards in the annual show of Printing Industries of New England. We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus design movement with a vibrant range of programs and events at Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, receiving international media attention and a special visit by the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, FrankWalter Steinmeier, and his wife, Elke Büdenbender, a judge. Our major fundraising event, My Favorite Things, honoring auctioneer Ron Bourgeault and his longtime support of our work and his many contributions to the world of American decorative arts, raised more than $350,000, which will help Historic New England share its collections with the public.

We also launched the Carl R. Nold Fund for Museum Education. We established this permanent endowment fund to both honor our retired president and chief executive officer and to ensure in perpetuity our commitment to funding school and youth programming. Donors have contributed $1.28 million to recognize Carl's seventeen years of service on the occasion of his retirement in May. Our Board of Trustees also honored Carl with the appointment to president emeritus.

With Vin Cipolla at the helm as our new president and chief executive officer, Historic New England forges ahead, still in unprecedented territory. The COVID-19 pandemic has yet to abate, calling for ever-vigilant measures to ensure the safety and well-being of our staff and the public. With Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the globe, Americans are grappling as never before with acknowledging and eradicating the systemic racism and cultural supremacy that has historically pervaded our society and our public and private institutions. As Historic New England embarks on drafting a new strategic plan to guide our future, we face new challenges along with amazing opportunities. We endeavor to think deeply about how to become more inclusive, more relevant, and more impactful, and we commit to welcoming diverse perspectives to contribute ideas and work on crafting initiatives. We also aim to make many meaningful contributions to our communities and to better position the organization as a national leader in the preservation field.

As we enter a new phase of connecting with the public, we aim to inspire greater creativity and vitality at Historic New England in order to share our organization’s relevance and work with an ever-broader constituency. Your generous support and partnership help sustain the organization and make it possible to realize our aspirations. With you, we are stewards of the future of New England and by extension, our nation and our world.

David A. Martland Chair, Board of Trustees

cover We completed repairs to the dormers and roof balustrade of Governor John Langdon House in preparation of painting the exterior of this Portsmouth, New Hampshire, treasure.

30

LEADERSHIP Fiscal Year 2020 BOARD OF TRUSTEES David A. Martland

Carl R. Nold

David L. Feigenbaum

Jacob D. Albert Richard C. Albright, Jr. Jeffrey P. Beale Amy de Rham George F. Fiske, Jr. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Christopher Karpinsky

Chair

Vice Chair and Clerk Sylvia Q. Simmons Vice Chair

Randy J. Parker Treasurer

President and CEO

Sidney Kenyon Gregory D. Lombardi Sandra Ourusoff Massey Elizabeth H. Owens Julie A. Porter Kristin L. Servison Angie Simonds Nancy B. Tooke Stephen H. White Alan W. Wong

TRUSTEES EMERITI Former trustees recognized for outstanding service Edward Lee Cave Martha D. Hamilton William C. S. Hicks Elizabeth B. Johnson Janina A. Longtine Robert I. Owens Roger T. Servison

BOARD OF OVERSEERS Sandra Ourusoff Massey Chair

F. Warren McFarlan Vice Chair

COUNCIL Robert P. Emlen Julie A. Porter Co-chairs

Lynne Z. Bassett Russell Bastedo Ralph C. Bloom Randolph D. Brock Michael R. Carter David W. Chase Richard W. Cheek Martha Fuller Clark Karen Clarke Barbara A. Cleary Gregory L. Colling Trudy Coxe Elizabeth Hope Cushing

Deborah L. Allinson Nancy J. Barnard Jeffrey L. Bernier Ronald P. Bourgeault Jon-Paul Couture Jeremiah E. de Rham

Edward C. Fleck William F. Gemmill Edward F. Gerber Leslie W. Hammond Stephen W. Harby Eric P. Hayes

James Horan Katherine Williams Kane Lydia F. Kimball A. Richard Moore, Jr. Paul Moran Stephen Mormoris

John Peixinho Susan Rogers Roger T. Servison Susan P. Sloan William P. Veillette

Elizabeth K. Deane Jared I. Edwards Eugene Gaddis Debra W. Glabeau Eric Hertfelder Bruce A. Irving Edward C. Johnson 3d Mark R. Kiefer Anne F. Kilguss Matthew Kirchman Nancy Lamb Paula Laverty Arleyn A. Levee Anita C. Lincoln John B. Little* Peter S. Lynch Peter E. Madsen

Elizabeth Hart Malloy Johanna McBrien Paul F. McDonough William L. McQueen Julianne Mehegan Maureen I. Meister Pauline C. Metcalf Thomas S. Michie Keith N. Morgan Henry Moss Cammie Henderson Murphy Stephen E. Murphy Ann Nevius Richard H. Oedel Janet Offensend Mary C. O'Neil

Elizabeth Seward Padjen, FAIA Samuel D. Perry Patrick Pinnell Gail Ravgiala Courtney Richardson Marita Rivero Timothy Rohan Carolyn Parsons Roy Virginia Rundell Gretchen G. Schuler Marcy Scott-Morton Joseph Peter Spang III* Andrew Spindler-Roesle Dennis E. Stark Charles M. Sullivan John W. Tyler

William B. Tyler Theodore W. Vasiliou Gerald W. R. Ward David Watters Richard F. Wien Susie Wilkening Robert W. Wilkins Richard H. Willis Robert O. Wilson Gary Wolf, FAIA Ellen M. Wyman Charles A. Ziering, Jr. * Deceased

Thank you to the many generous guests and donors who made gifts for the benefit event, My Favorite Things, in support of the Library & Archives and collections held on January 11, 2020. The evening honored Ron Bourgeault for his lifetime of contributions to Historic New England and the world of American decorative arts.

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DONORS

We are honored to share the names on the following pages recognizing those who, through their generous and thoughtful gifts, have strengthened Historic New England this past fiscal year. To each of them we extend our most sincere appreciation. In addition, we would like to thank those who supported us at every level, including our 8,663 members.

April 1, 2019 - March 31, 2020 $250,000 and above Anonymous Estate of Ms. Lucretia Hoover Giese Mass Cultural Council

$100,000 - $249,999

The Nancy Foss Heath and Richard B. Heath Educational, Cultural and Environmental Foundation van Beuren Charitable Foundation, Inc. Estate of Mr. William G. Waters

$50,000–$99,999

Anonymous Mr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Ruby W. & LaVon P. Linn Foundation Dr. Janina A. Longtine Teresa and Dave Martland Mr. and Mrs. John B. McDowell Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Owens Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Paterson Historical Fund Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison

$25,000–$49,999

Anonymous (3) The Americana Foundation Mr. Jeffrey P. Beale The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine City of Boston Community Preservation Committee Edward Lee Cave Foundation Mr. George F. Fiske, Jr. George B. Henderson Foundation Barbara and Amos Hostetter Institute of Museum and Library Services Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey R. T. Kenyon Land Conservation and Advocacy Trust Gregory D. Lombardi Mr. and Mrs. M. Holt Massey Karen and Warren McFarlan National Historical Publications and Records Commission Caren and Randy Parker Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission Samuel H. Kress Foundation Arthur D. Clarke and Susan Sloan Mr. and Mrs. Michael K. Tooke Wentworth Lear Historic Houses Association Stephen H. and Virginia S. White Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Wills 32

$10,000–$24,999

Anonymous (2) Estate of Dr. Robert H. Ackerman Mr. Jacob D. Albert Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Albright, Jr. Ms. Deborah L. Allinson Mr. and Mrs. Frederick D. Ballou Maureen and Edward Bousa The Champlin Foundation Ogden Codman Trust David and Victoria Croll The Davis Family Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah E. de Rham Mr. David L. Feigenbaum and Ms. Maureen Meister The Felicia Fund, Inc. Dr. Thomas A. J. Frank and Ms. Alexandra Hastings Ms. Diane Gipson Gordon J. Hammersley Foundation Eric and Dorothy Hayes Ms. Elizabeth L. Johnson Susan Little Private Charitable Foundation Peter S. Lynch Mr. and Mrs. Samuel D. Perry Ms. Julie A. Porter Mr. James V. Righter Margaret and John Ruttenberg Saquish Foundation Mr. Robert L. Simonds and Ms. Angie Simonds Skinner Inc. Mr. Joseph Peter Spang III* Ms. Jennifer Spaur Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan M. Uhrig Mrs. Nina Heald Webber

$5,000–$9,999

Anonymous (2) Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Alfond Mr. and Mrs. George Ballantyne The Barnes Foundation, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Alan Bembenek Terry Bremer and Linda Hewitt Martha Fuller Clark and Geoffrey E. Clark Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Boston ML Coolidge Eldred's Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Charles and Julia Ganson, Jr. Mrs. Jean Gibran Michael and Nancy Grogan Mr. John F. Haley and Mrs. Anne R. Haley Mr. Stephen W. Harby The Roy A. Hunt Foundation Holly and Bruce Johnstone Mr. Stephen Kaloyanides, Jr. Mr. Christopher Karpinsky

Leigh Keno Ms. Diana Korzenik Paul and Jean Moran Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Ms. Heidi O'Neill Mrs. James Pearson Robert A. Pemberton and Barbara R. Jordan Mr. and Mrs. George Putnam Mr. James Schibanoff and Mrs. Nancy Schibanoff Mr. Robert Bayard Severy Wendy Shattuck and Sam Plimpton Dr. Sylvia Q. Simmons South County Garden Club of Rhode Island State Street Bank & Trust Co. Mr. Charles M. Sullivan and Ms. Susan E. Maycock Mr. and Mrs. William P. Veillette Nathaniel Wheeler TUA York, Bank of America, N. A., Trustee Clara B. Winthrop Charitable Trust Mr. Alan Wong and Ms. Wendy Wong Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

$2,500–$4,999

Anonymous Mr. Mark Canfield Allen Mr. François L. Bardonnet and Dr. Steven L. St. Peter Bargmann Hendrie & Archetype, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. John D. Barnard Mr. Jeffrey L. Bernier Ms. E. Greer Candler Mr. Harold J. Carroll Karin and David Chamberlain Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Charles Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Cheek Ms. Karen Clarke Cleary Insurance, Inc. John and Jayma Coghlin Lorna Condon Mr. John D. Corey and Mr. Miguel Rosales Mr. Jon-Paul Couture Elizabeth and Nicholas Deane George and Leigh Denny Ms. Janet Dinan and Mr. Peter Dinan Alma Gibbs Donchian Foundation Mrs. Rebecca Martin Evarts and Mr. James Evarts Firestone & Parson Dr. and Mrs. Oscar Fitzgerald Mr. Edward C. Fleck and Ms. Eileen M. McCormack

Dr. Christopher D. M. Fletcher Fortress Mr. William F. Gemmill and Ms. Sally Gemmill Mr. A. Curtis Greer II Mr. and Mrs. Garth H. Greimann Mr. and Mrs. Martin D. Hale Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hamilton Mrs. Leslie W. Hammond and Mr. James R. Hammond III Lucile and Bill Hicks Mr. Timothy T. Hilton Mr. and Mrs. Tim Holiner Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. Howland Institution for Savings Charitable Foundation Mr. Joseph S. Junkin Mr. Peter Kapinos Kennebunk Savings Mr. Jonathan M. Keyes Ms. Anne F. Kilguss Ms. Sarah C. Lawson and Mr. David Hoey Dr. Frederic F. Little and Dr. Claudia L. Ordonez Lovett-Woodsum Foundation, Inc. Ms. Nancy Lukitsh Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati The McIninch Foundation Mr. Thomas S. Michie Mr. A. Richard Moore, Jr. Dr. Alice D. Murphy Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Oedel Mr. and Mrs. David Offensend Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Ms. Heidi Pribell and Mr. Robert Svikhart Prince Charitable Trust REM Development Company Mr. and Mrs. Mark V. Rickabaugh Mrs. Louise C. Riemer Malcolm P. and Susan A. Rogers Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Rounds Mr. William T. Ruhl and Ms. Jennifer C. Ruhl Ms. Lois C. Russell Mr. Andrew F. Saxe and Mr. Dean Vollick Mr. John W. Sofia The Commons Mr. and Mrs. William N. Thorndike, Jr. Dr. Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr. Trefler's Theodore W. Vasiliou Mr. Robert W. Wilkins, Jr. Mr. Richard H. Willis Stephen G. Woodsum and Anne R. Lovett Mr. and Mrs. John A. Yozell

$1,000 - $2,499

Ames True Value Hardware and Supply Dr. and Mrs. Reinier Beeuwkes III Mr. Raffi R. Berberian Dr. and Mrs. Ernst R. Berndt Mr. and Mrs. Kenyon C. Bolton III Dr. and Mrs. Robert Booth Ms. Désirée Caldwell and Mr. William F. Armitage, Jr. Mr. Jay E. Cantor Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey S. Caraboolad Mr. Michael R. Carter Mr. John D. Childs Mr. William H. Claflin and Ms. Cathy Claflin Tom and Betsy Coghlin Mrs. I. W. Colburn Mr. and Mrs. William Crozier, Jr. Estate of Abbott Lowell Cummings Mary E. Darmstaetter Ms. Deb DeColfmacker The Decorative Arts Trust Mr. Robert Diserens and Ms. Karla Diserens Mr. Richard A. Duffy and Mr. Jose M. Rodriguez East Cambridge Savings Bank Elsie A. Brown Fund, Inc. Alan S. Emmet Mr. Jeffrey Epstein Mr. Gary N. Farrell Ferguson Perforating & Wire Co. Ms. Laura W. M. Foote and Mr. Nathaniel W. Foote Mrs. Pamela W. Fox Mr. John V. Frank Mr. and Mrs. James L. Garvin Ms. Kayla Gentile Mr. Edward F. Gerber Mr. Peter A. Gittleman Ms. Jean Gran Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas P. Greville Dave Hackett at Lila Delman Ms. Martha D. Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Donald E. Hare Tina and Bill Harsch The Hope Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Francis W. Hunnewell Ipswich Ale Brewery Mr. Craig Jewett and Ms. Alison Huber-Jewett Mrs. Isobel Kahn Jennifer Kent Mr. and Mrs. Keith L. Knowlton Ms. Laura D. Kunkemueller Mr. and Mrs. George Lewis Ms. Amy Morgan Link and Mr. Christopher Link Ms. April Livermore and Mr. Glenn Livermore Locke Lord LLP Heidi Loomis Mr. Jonathan B. Loring Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Lubin Ms. Amy Hunter Maguire and Mr. Steve Maguire Main Street Landing

Maine Humanities Council Mr. and Ms. Kenneth R. Martin Mr. Frank Mauran Liz and Frank Mauran Mr. and Mrs. Franklin W. McCann Mr. and Mrs. John McCartney Mr. and Mrs. John L. McGraw Mr. Arthur McKenny William L. McQueen and Carla O. A. Bosch Mr. Paul L. Merrill Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop G. Minot The MLM Charitable Foundation Dr. and Mrs. Keith N. Morgan Network for Good Mrs. Carolyn M. Osteen and Dr. Robert Osteen Ms. Elizabeth Seward Padjen, FAIA, and Mr. Thaddeus Gillespie PNC Wealth Management Preservation Trust of Vermont John and Dorothy Remondi Ms. Kelly Reynolds Mr. Kenneth D. Roberts Bill and Kathleen Rousseau Ms. Christine Salas and Mr. Pito Salas Mr. Kenneth E. Schaller* Ms. Lisa A. Schamberg and Mr. Patrick S. Robins Mr. Marvin Schwartz and Ms. Donna Schwartz The Sharpe Family Foundation/ Julie and Henry D. Sharpe III Mr. and Mrs. Normand F. Smith III Ms. Julie A. Solz Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle and Mr. Hiram Butler Taylor Interior Design Maryann Thompson Architects Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Torrey Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Townsend Ms. Melissa Tully Vermont Humanities Council Mr. and Mrs. Gary M. Viera Walmart Foundation Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. John H. Whiton Ms. Mary Wilkinson Ms. Sarah Wragge Mrs. Susan L. Zuckert and Mr. Steve Rogers

$500 - $999

Anonymous Mrs. Hope L. Baker Ms. Kate Barber and Mr. Edward Pitoniak Mr. R. D. Beck and Mr. Gregory R. Van Boven Dr. and Mrs. Ford W. Bell Ms. Valerie J. Best Mr. Brian C. Bigler and Mr. Ted J. Raia Mr. and Mrs. Frederick L. Bissinger, Jr. Ms. Carol W. Bowen Mr. Jeffrey H. Burbank and Ms. Cynthia C. Burbank

Ms. Susan D. Byrne Edmund & Betsy Cabot Charitable Foundation Ms. Nadine Cancell and Mr. Craig Curry Mr. and Mrs. Gib Carey Mr. Gerald L. Celano and Ms. Kelly A. Marshall Mary and James Nicoll Cooper Cox Automotive, Inc. Ms. Frederica Matera Cushman Dead River Company Ms. Carissa Demore Mr. and Ms. Peter A. Diana Mr. David T. Donovan Mr. Michael F. Dunn and Ms. Suzanne Christensen Dunn Mr. Jon H. Edwards and Ms. Nancy Fox Elliott Physical Therapy Mr. Robert P. Emlen Ms. Luise M. Erdmann Ms. Elaine Espinola Mr. and Mrs. Robin H. Etheridge Roseann Ferrini Fiber Optics Technology, Inc. Ms. Elisa Fredrickson Mr. and Mrs. Peter R. Gates Ms. Christina P. Glen Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Goedecke Ms. Wendy Gus Mr. Benjamin K. Haavik Mr. Peter F. Hickey Mr. Roland Hoch and Mrs. Sarah Garland-Hoch Ms. Donna Hochberg Hometown Bank Mrs. Judy Hood James and Lucy Hutchinson Janovitz & Tse Realtors Mr. and Mrs. Wade Judge Ms. Susan H. Kearney and Dr. Gary P. Kearney Dr. and Mrs. David R. Kelland Mr. Mark R. Kiefer Mr. David S. Kirk Mr. Christopher Laconi Carl M. P. Larrabee Agency, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. David S. Lee Mr. and Mrs. Newton H. Levee Mrs. Anita Lincoln Ms. Julienne K. Lindberg Mr. and Mrs. James E. Marble, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Charles McCambridge Frank and Diane McNamee Mrs. Martha O. Milot The Minneapolis Foundation Mr. Stephen Mormoris and Mr. Robert Cornell Mr. and Mrs. William G. Morton, Jr. Mr. Henry Moss Mr. Peter D. Nalle Ms. Mary B. Noble Mr. and Mrs. Donald A. Ocker P. Gagnon & Son, Inc. Mr. Charles H. Page Rev. Lynne B. Phipps Ms. Barbara A. Pike Mr. and Mrs. John F. Randall

Rita and Norton Reamer Ms. Patricia P. Reeser Mr. John S. Reidy Robert B. Rettig Mr. and Ms. Aaron Rhodes Estate of Mrs. Barbara A. Ridlon Mr. and Mrs. David P. Ries Mr. Markham Roberts S+H Construction The San Francisco Foundation Mr. Stephen P. Schultz Mark and Elise Seeley Fund of Greater Worcester Community Foundation Dan and Jody Sherman Ellen C. L. Simmons Mr. John B. Southard Mr. and Mrs. Karl Spilhaus Mrs. George R. Sprague Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. Mrs. Virginia E. Sweatt Ms. Anne G. Symchych Thacher Montessori School Mr. Douglas Thayer Mr. John B. Tittmann United Way of Rhode Island Mrs. Jeptha H. Wade Watertown Savings Bank Mr. and Mrs. Stephen M. Weld Mr. Ian Whitmore Wilmington Trust Dr. and Mrs. Robert O. Wilson York Hospital Ms. Deborah G. Zelen Mr. Clifton D. Zwirner

APPLETON CIRCLE

Thank you to these passionate and generous supporters who share a love of New England history, architecture, art, and antiques, and enjoy meeting and connecting with other Appleton Circle members who share similar interests.

Anonymous (5) Mr. Jacob D. Albert Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Albright, Jr. Mr. Mark Canfield Allen Ms. Deborah L. Allinson Mr. and Mrs. Frederick D. Ballou Mr. François L. Bardonnet and Dr. Steven L. St. Peter Mr. and Mrs. John D. Barnard Mr. Jeffrey P. Beale Mr. and Mrs. Alan Bembenek Dr. and Mrs. Ernst R. Berndt Mr. Jeffrey L. Bernier Mr. Ronald P. Bourgeault and Mr. James Horan Maureen and Edward Bousa Ms. Désirée Caldwell and Mr. William F. Armitage, Jr. Ms. E. Greer Candler Mr. Harold J. Carroll Mr. and Mrs. David M. Chamberlain Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Charles Arthur D. Clarke and Susan Sloan Ms. Karen Clarke 33

Mr. John D. Corey and Mr. Miguel Rosales Mr. Jon-Paul Couture Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah E. de Rham Elizabeth and Nicholas Deane Ms. Janet Dinan and Mr. Peter Dinan Mrs. Rebecca Martin Evarts and Mr. James Evarts Mr. David L. Feigenbaum and Ms. Maureen Meister Mr. George F. Fiske, Jr. Mr. Edward C. Fleck and Ms. Eileen M. McCormack Dr. Christopher D. M. Fletcher Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Dr. Thomas A. J. Frank and Ms. Alexandra Hastings Charles and Julia Ganson, Jr. Mr. William F. Gemmill and Ms. Sally Gemmill Mr. Edward F. Gerber Ms. Diane Gipson Mr. Dan Kendall Gordon and Ms. Maureen Gordon Mr. A. Curtis Greer II Mr. and Mrs. Martin D. Hale Mr. John F. Haley and Mrs. Anne R. Haley Ms. Martha D. Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hamilton Mrs. Leslie W. Hammond and Mr. James R. Hammond III Mr. Stephen W. Harby Eric and Dorothy Hayes Lucile and Bill Hicks Mr. and Mrs. Tim Holiner Barbara and Amos Hostetter Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. Howland Mr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Ms. Elizabeth L. Johnson Holly and Bruce Johnstone Mr. Joseph S. Junkin Mr. Stephen Kaloyanides, Jr. Katherine Williams Kane Mr. Peter Kapinos Mr. Christopher Karpinsky Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey R. T. Kenyon Mr. Jonathan M. Keyes Ms. Anne F. Kilguss Lydia F. Kimball Mr. Clifford Lasser and Ms. Elizabeth Adams Ms. Sarah C. Lawson and Mr. David Hoey Dr. Frederic F. Little and Dr. Claudia L. Ordonez Gregory D. Lombardi Dr. Janina A. Longtine Ms. Nancy Lukitsh Peter S. Lynch Teresa and Dave Martland Mr. and Mrs. M. Holt Massey Mr. and Mrs. Franklin W. McCann Mr. and Mrs. John B. McDowell Karen and Warren McFarlan Pauline C. Metcalf Mr. Thomas S. Michie Mr. A. Richard Moore, Jr. Paul and Jean Moran 34

Mr. Stephen Mormoris and Mr. Robert Cornell Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Mr. and Mrs. David Offensend Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Owens Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Caren and Randy Parker Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Robert A. Pemberton and Barbara R. Jordan Mr. and Mrs. Samuel D. Perry Ms. Julie A. Porter Ms. Heidi Pribell and Mr. Robert Svikhart Mr. and Mrs. George Putnam Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy P. Richardson Mr. and Mrs. Mark V. Rickabaugh Mr. and Mrs. T. Williams Roberts Malcolm P. and Susan A. Rogers Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Rounds Ms. Lois C. Russell Margaret and John Ruttenberg Mr. Andrew F. Saxe and Mr. Dean Vollick Mr. James Schibanoff and Mrs. Nancy Schibanoff Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison Dr. Sylvia Q. Simmons Mr. Robert L. Simonds and Ms. Angie Simonds Mr. John W. Sofia Mr. Joseph Peter Spang III* Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle and Mr. Hiram Butler Mr. Charles M. Sullivan and Ms. Susan E. Maycock Mr. and Mrs. William N. Thorndike, Jr. Dr. Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Michael K. Tooke Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan M. Uhrig Stephen H. and Virginia S. White Mr. Robert W. Wilkins, Jr. Mr. Richard H. Willis Mr. Alan Wong and Ms. Wendy Wong Stephen G. Woodsum and Anne R. Lovett Mr. and Mrs. John A. Yozell Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

GIFTS MADE IN HONOR OF CARL R. NOLD’S RETIREMENT

Gifts totaling $1.28 million were made in honor of Carl R. Nold in recognition of his seventeen years of service to Historic New England as President and CEO. Anonymous (4) Jacob D. Albert Bear and Pam Albright Cheryl and JT Aldridge James G. Alexander Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Alfond Deborah L. Allinson Louise Todd Ambler Mr. and Mrs. Frederick D. Ballou

Jeffrey P. Beale Ford and Amy Bell Mr. and Mrs. Alan Bembenek Dr. and Mrs. Ernst R. Berndt Ms. Sarah Bevington Ms. Sally Blanchard-O’Brien and Mr. Sean O’Brien Mr. Jonathan M. Bockian and Ms. Sharon Teitelbaum Maureen and Edward Bousa Kathryn E. Cade and Fred Miller Ms. Désirée Caldwell and Mr. William F. Armitage, Jr. Edward Lee Cave Karin and David Chamberlain Ms. Carole Charnow Richard and Betsy Cheek Mr. John D. Childs Ms. Barbara Cleary and Mr. David McLaren Hart, AIA Lorna Condon Elizabeth and Nicholas Deane Mr. Richard A. Duffy and Mr. Jose M. Rodriguez Robert Peabody Emlen Mrs. Maia Farish George Fiske Dr. Christopher D. M. Fletcher Mr. Jeffrey T. Gonyeau and Mr. Jack Dennerlein Alice and Thom Gould Ms. Naomi Gray and The Reverend Patrick T. Gray Benjamin K. Haavik and Amanda Van Vleck Ms. Martha D. Hamilton Mrs. Leslie W. Hammond and Mr. James R. Hammond III Stephen Harby and Kritsada Buajud Dorothy and Eric Hayes Eric Hertfelder Lucile and Bill Hicks Mr. Thomas L. Hinkle Kate Hooper Melinda L. Huff Mr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Elizabeth L. Johnson Laura E. Johnson Susan and Peter Johnson Jennifer Kent Sidney and Geoffrey Kenyon Vicky L. Kruckeberg Catherine Coolidge Lastavica Gregory D. Lombardi Dr. Janina A. Longtine Terry and Dave Martland Laurie Masciandaro Sandra and Holt Massey Frank and Liz Mauran Mr. and Mrs. John B. McDowell Karen and Warren McFarlan William L. McQueen and Carla O. A. Bosch Ms. Maureen Meister and Mr. David L. Feigenbaum Pauline Metcalf Mr. and Mrs. William G. Morton, Jr. Carl R. Nold and Vicky L. Kruckeberg

Ms. Mary Anne Osborne Ed and Linda Owens Robert and Elizabeth Owens Ms. Joan M. Pagliuca and Mr. Joseph Pagliuca Caren and Randy Parker Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Ms. Julie A. Porter Mr. John A. Quatrale Ms. Catherine M. Raddatz and Mr. Donald Raddatz Kenneth and Shirley Rendell Robert Rosenberg and Mary Wolfson Carolyn Parsons Roy Ms. Lois C. Russell Mr. John Scherbarth and Ms. Katie Luz Gretchen and John Schuler Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison Dr. Sylvia Q. Simmons Mr. Robert L. Simonds and Ms. Angie Simonds Skinner Inc. Susan P. Sloan and Arthur D. Clarke Lynne and Peter Smiledge Mr. Joseph Peter Spang III* Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle and Mr. Hiram Butler Ms. Ann H. Stewart Ms. Deborah L. Terry Mr. Forrest G. Tiedeman Nancy B. Tooke Kenneth C. Turino and Christopher R. Mathias Mr. John W. Tyler Mr. Max A. van Balgooy Dr. Katheryn P. Viens Gary and Diane Viera Village Green Child Care Center Ms. Rita G. Walsh Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Webb III Mrs. Nina Heald Webber Ann E. Werner Gina and Steve White Gary Wolf, FAIA Mr. Alan Wong and Ms. Wendy Wong Ms. Penny A. Zaleta and Mr. Kurt Amsler Margaret and Chip Ziering * Deceased

MATCHING GIFT COMPANIES

Amazon Smile Foundation Benevity Eversource GE Foundation IBM Corporation Network for Good Qualcomm Foundation Simplify Compliance State Street Foundation Matching Gift Program T. Rowe Price Charitable Giving Texas Instruments Foundation Truist UnumProvident Corporation YourCause

GIFTS IN KIND

Barden Family Orchard Mr. Jeffrey P. Beale Beautiful Day Granola Ms. Susan Bosco Clancy Designs Glass Studio The Coffee Guy Mrs. Kathleen Collins Mr. John D. Corey and Mr. Miguel Rosales Ms. Tammie Corioso CVS Health Dave's Marketplace Ms. Susan Delaney Mr. Frank L. Dellazoppa Del's Lemonade Different Drummer Dunkin Donuts Early American Life Elliott Physical Therapy Firebrick Design Four Seasons Hotel Boston Fruit Center Marketplace Ms. Maxine Frukoff Mr. Nathan Gordon Green River Silver Co. Ms. Karen Hainline Robert M. Hale, Goodwin Procter LLP Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hamilton Mr. Farish Hemeon Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Hopkins Immedia The Inn at Woodstock Hill The Inside Scoop Ipswich Ale Brewery Isurus Market Research and Consulting Jeffrey P. Johnson, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP Journeyman Press Kate & Company Lake Champlain Chocolates Lazy K Ranch Mr. Walter Lenartowicz Gregory Lombardi Design Mack’s Catering David A. Martland, Nixon Peabody LLP Ms. Erica Max McLaughlin & Moran, Inc.

Montilio’s Baking Company Newport Craft Brewing & Distilling Co. The Newport Sweet Shoppe Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Ocean State Oyster Festival Ms. Michelle Peele and Mr. Edward Peele Miss Jane A. Phillips Rhed's Hot Sauce Saltbox Sea Farm The Savory Grape Rhode Island Rental Robin Hollow Farm Rock Spot Climbing Mrs. Diane S. Romanosky Samiotes Consulting, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison Shacksbury Cider Mr. and Mrs. Greg Shaw Skinner, Inc. Skylight Studios Taylor Brooke Winery Teddy Bearskins Tendercrop Farm Urban Tree Service Willimantic Brewing Company Willywaw The World Store Yoreganics

GIFTS IN MEMORY OF In memory of Faye Rogers Baron Philip and Lucy Saunders In memory of Mr. Ernest R. Ginnetti Ms. Nancy Cross In memory of Charles B. Hosmer, Jr. Mrs. Jeralyn P. Lewitz In memory of Harvey Kahn Mrs. Isobel Kahn Kenneth and Nancy Martin In memory of H. Roll McLaughlin Mr. Harry R. McLaughlin, Jr.

In memory of Carl Panall Ms. Elaine Espinola

In honor of Richard Heath Mrs. Martha Heath

In memory of Mr. Steve John Rechner Mrs. Cynthia M. de Bruyn Kops Democratic Town Committee, Woodstock, Conn.

Ms. Cynthia T. Donoho

In honor of Jeanne Kent Jennifer Kent

In memory of Josephine McClintock Bellamy Severy and Robert Pease Severy Mr. Robert Bayard Severy

In honor of Catherine Coolidge Lastavica Mr. Jeffrey H. Burbank and Ms. Cynthia C. Burbank

In memory of Betty-Jane Kimball Waterman and Robert Waterman Mr. and Mrs. Verner P. Welsh

In honor of Susan Little Ms. Anna Bernath Mr. Seth F. Paradise and Ms. Barbara F. Paradise Mr. Joseph Tallman and Ms. Carolyn E. Curry Ms. Sydney Waller

In memory of Charles M. Werly Saquish Foundation

Gifts in Honor of

In honor of Deborah Allinson, Joan Berndt, Maureen and Edward Bousa, Bill Hicks, Carl R. Nold, Roger Servison, and Susan Sloan Holly and Bruce Johnstone In honor of Hope L. Baker Jennifer Kent In honor of Kayla S. Carcieri-Cassidy Mrs. Alison Carcieri-Cassidy and Mr. Scott Cassidy In honor of Lorna Condon and Chloe Schoppmeyer Mr. William Shirley In honor of Lorna Condon and Martha Van Koevering Mr. Tripp Evans and Mr. Edward B. Cabral In honor of Marcia Corey Mr. John D. Corey and Mr. Miguel Rosales In honor of Frank L. Dellazoppa Ms. Susan Delaney In honor of George F. Fiske, Jr. Ms. Elaine W. Fiske and Mr. Philip Ladd In honor of Malcolm D. Gent Ms. Lauretta M. Daley and Mr. Andrew Gent In honor of Peter A. Gittleman Ms. Julia Gittleman and Mr. Tom Mendelsohn In honor of Elizabeth T. Hain Mr. John D. Conway and Ms. Marcella Hain-Conway In honor of Martha L. Heath Mr. Richard Heath

In honor of Peggy Konitzky Mr. Benjamin Harris and Ms. Rebecca Mitchell

In honor of Gregory D. Lombardi Mr. James Rifino In honor of the John Lougee family of Exeter, New Hampshire Ellen C. L. Simmons In honor of Stanley Paterson Paterson Historical Fund In honor of Milo Renniger Ms. Kathleen Taricani-Hickey In honor of Hoyt Willis Ms. Beth Willis In honor of Sally Zimmerman Ms. Laura W. M. Foote and Mr. Nathaniel W. Foote Ms. Thalia Tringo

DONORS TO THE COLLECTIONS

Ms. Seth Berkowitz Mr. and Mrs. Max J. Brenninkmeyer Estate of Nicholas J. Burke The Currie Estate Ms. Frederica Matera Cushman Bethany Dorau Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Ms. Jane A. Frantz Mr. Ray Jorgenson Nell Leach Ms. Susan P. Little Ms. Beatrice F. Manz William L. McQueen Ms. Libby Meier Ms. Kara R. Moore Ms. Margo Moore Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Ms. Heidi Pribell Julian Race Mr. and Mrs. William M. Rand, Jr. Mr. Peter Schena Skinner Inc. Ms. Mary O. Stevens Tuppence van Harn 35

Mr. William P. Veillette Mr. and Mrs. Gary M. Viera Mr. and Mrs. A. William Vose Mr. Charles Wiley Ms. Beth Williams Artemis Willis Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

DONORS TO THE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES

Anonymous Albert, Righter & Tittmann Architects Kate A. Askew Mr. Gerald Bernstein Mr. Ralph C. Bloom Mr. Jonathan M. Bockian, Esq. Mr. J. David Bohl Mrs. Ruth Brenninkmeyer Mr. Rhett Butler Mr. John Carpenter Ms. Nicole A. Chalfant Ms. Catherine W. Chapman Ms. Sara B. Chase Mr. Richard W. Cheek Christie’s Lorna Condon Mr. Gary Davis Ms. Claire W. Dempsey Mr. Stephen K. Desroches Ms. Harron Ellenson Ms. Katharine P. Emlen Mr. Robert P. Emlen Mrs. Jean Gibran Mr. Peter A. Gittleman Goulston & Storrs Mr. Richard M. Gramly Mr. David W. Granston III Mr. Benjamin K. Haavik Mr. David Hanson Mr. Michael Herrick

OTIS SOCIETY

The Otis Society honors individuals who have provided for Historic New England through their wills, life income arrangements, and other long-term provisions. Named for Harrison Gray Otis, the prominent lawyer and politician whose 1796 home has been a Historic New England museum since 1916, this important group reflects the extraordinary impact of planned giving on the future of Historic New England.

Anonymous (7) Elliott M. Abbott Diana Abrashkin Mr. Peter W. Ambler and Ms. Lindsay M. Miller Mrs. Oliver F. Ames Dr. Barbara A. Beall Mr. Ralph C. Bloom Ms. Jerrilee Cain J. Scott and Valerie McKay Chaloud Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Cheek 36

Historic Fredericksburg Mr. Philip H. Kendrick Sidney A. Kenyon Ms. Katherine Kiefer Ms. Diana Korzenik Miss Selina F. Little Mr. Anthony M. Luckino Ms. Beatrice F. Manz Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Mr. Chris Matthias Mr. William L. McQueen James Messineo Mr. Thomas S. Michie Mr. Christopher Monkhouse

Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Nylander Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Mr. Thomas M. Paine Ms. Dottie Paulin Mr. Charles A. Purinton II Catha Rambusch Steve and Kit Rosenthal Ms. Donna E. Russo Ms. Andrea F. Schoenfeld Mr. Robert Bayard Severy Mr. Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr. Mr. Joel D. Shield and Ms. Nancy Myerson Ms. Angie Simonds

Ms. Cathy W. Smith Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle The Strong Museum Mr. Peter Sugar Mr. Charles M. Sullivan Mr. Robert P. Surabian Mr. and Mrs. John R. Tankard Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Townsend Mr. Kenneth C. Turino Carmen D. Valentino Mr. William P. Veillette Diane L. Viera Mrs. Nina Heald Webber Whitefield Historical Society Ms. Jessica Wills-Lipscomb

Ms. Margaret L. Clarke William C. Crum Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Currie* Stuart A. Drake Mr. and Mrs. Jack Dutzy Mr. David T. Edsall Mr. Nicholas C. Edsall Dr. Donald Ehresmann Alan S. Emmet Mrs. Marjorie A. Falvey Roseann Ferrini Mr. William B. Finch and Ms. Carol Rose Dr. and Mrs. Oscar Fitzgerald Mr. William F. Gemmill and Ms. Sally Gemmill Ms. Janet Green Annabella Gualdoni and Vito Cavallo Mr. Jeffery M. Hall Mr. Philip A. Hayden Mr. Henry B. Hoover, Jr. Mr. Ralph Johnston Mr. Christopher Keppelman Mrs. Mary S. Kingsbery

Catherine Coolidge Lastavica Ms. Ginny Leslie Mrs. Shirley M. Marston Mr. John Matzke Mr. Paul F. McDonough, Jr. and Ms. Carla A. Blakley Karen and Warren McFarlan William L. McQueen and Carla O. A. Bosch Mr. Alan Murray Ms. Beverly P. Mutrie Mr. John A. Neale and Dr. Stephen L. Boswell Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Nylander Nancy Osgood Mr. Stephen P. Parson Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Mr. Brian R. Pfeiffer Deborah S. Reed Robert B. Rettig Mrs. Barbara A. Ridlon* Mr. James V. Righter Mr. David N. Rooney

Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison Mr. Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr. Mr. Alan P. Slack Susan P. Sloan Mrs. Frederick A. Stahl Dennis E. Stark and Robert F. Amarantes Mr. J. Reed Stewart Thomas A. Stone and Valerie M. Warrior Ms. Denise C. Sullivan Ms. Bette Task E. Clothier Tepper Bryant F. Tolles, Jr. Nancy Briggs Tooke Mr. George E. Triantaris and Mr. Steve Nigzus Mrs. Anne M. Twichell Mr. Kemble Widmer II and Ms. Elisabeth Garrett Widmer Mrs. Priscilla Hutt Williams Mr. Roger D. Willmott Ms. Susan F. Witzell * Deceased

Financials Operating Financial Statement a APRIL 1, 2019 - MARCH 31, 2020

REVENUE FY2020 Investment Return Designated for Operations b

$ 6,245,000

% increase % of FY2019 (decrease) TOTAL $ 6,339,000

(1%)

49%

Revenue from Operations

2,578,000

2,555,000

1%

20%

Contributed Income

2,933,000

2,776,000

6%

23%

Contributed Income for Property & Long-term Investments

2%

8%

(32%)

100%

Total Revenue

966,000

$ 12,722,000

$ 12,615,000

EXPENSES FY2020 Museum Operations

$

4,685,000

945,000

FY2019 $ 4,473,000

% increase % of (decrease) TOTAL 5%

37%

Preservation Maintenance

1,919,000 2,396,000

(20%)

15%

Collections & Exhibitions

1,548,000

1,658,000

(7%)

12%

Education & Public Programming

1,480,000

1,424,000

4%

12%

Administration

1,165,000

(2%)

9%

Fundraising 775,000 780,000

(1%)

6%

Revenue Generating Projects

580,000

567,000

2%

5%

Preservation Easement Program

328,000

397,000

(17%)

2%

Marketing

231,000

247,000

(6%)

2%

(3%)

100%

Total Expenses c

$ 12,711,000

Net Income (Loss) from Operations d $

11,000

1,186,000

$ 13,128,000 $ (513,000)

Endowment Assets e

$ 102,743,000

$ 127,379,000

Gain (Loss) on Investments

$ (18,980,000)

$ (2,771,000)

a T his financial statement represents the general operating activities for Historic New England only. Other non-operating activity, including realized and unrealized gains on restricted assets, can be found within the audited financial statements. b “ Investment Return Designated for Operations” represents endowment funds approved by the Board of Trustees to support annual operations, and income from trusts. The annual draw is based on appropriating 5% (the board may approve more or less each year) of the preceding twenty-quarter fair market value of the investments as of December 31. c In FY 2020, total expenses were spent as follows: program expenses = 83%, administration and marketing = 11%, and fundraising = 6% d “ Net income from Operations” includes contributions for property acquisitions and long-term investment of $0.9 million in FY 2020 and FY 2019. e “Endowment Assets” excludes beneficial interest in perpetual trusts which equaled $8.7 million in FY 2020 and $9.8 million in FY 2019.

37

Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Boston, Massachusetts Permit No. 58621 141 Cambridge Street Boston, Mass. 02114-2702

An Early

TARBELL

by NANCY CARLISLE Senior Curator of Collections

Waiting. Morning Effect. Venice, 1885.

Oil on panel, 19 x 22¼ inches. Museum purchase.

School, and become founding members of The Ten, ten painters who seceded from the Society of American Artists in order to pursue a more modern impressionistic style of painting. Fellow members of The Ten Born in West Groton, Massachusetts, included John Henry Twachtman and raised in the Dorchester section (1853–1902), Childe Hassam (1859– of Boston, Edmund Charles Tarbell 1935), Julian Alden Weir (1852–1919), (1862–1938) turned an early aptitude Willard Metcalf (1858–1925), and for drawing into a successful career Thomas Dewing (1851–1938). and an enduring reputation. After While a student in Paris, a cholera studying at the Massachusetts Normal outbreak sent Tarbell out of the Art School [now Massachusetts city. After a brief trip to London he College of Art and Design, or headed to Munich in an attempt to MassArt], Tarbell apprenticed at the get into art school there. However, Forbes Lithographic Company before the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, attending the School of the Museum was oversubscribed, so he and fellow of Fine Arts, Boston [Museum American artist Abbott Fuller Graves School], where he met fellow student (1859–1936) went to Venice. They Frank W. Benson (1862–1951). The two spent three months in a hotel on the would go on to train at the Académie Grand Canal with an extra room for Julian in Paris, teach at the Museum use as a studio. Surviving drawings

and paintings suggest that Tarbell spent much of his time exploring Venice and drawing its buildings as well as its people.

The figure in the foreground of Waiting. Morning Effect. Venice is almost certainly the gondolier Tarbell describes in letters home as “a regular jewel,” seeming “to know just what you want. If you don’t tell him where to go, he just paddles up and down all the small canals where he thinks you would like to sketch. If he sees you looking at a place or talking about it, he stops and waits till you get through.” It may be the patient gondolier that the “waiting” in the painting’s title refers to. Although an early example of Tarbell’s work, the painting shows his skill at rendering the dark, rich colors of early morning and his mastery at conveying the water’s glassy surface.

The painting, a recent purchase, is on view in the parlor of the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts.

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