Displaying items by tag: Pennsylvania

Of the many fine artists who were drawn to Rhode Island’s Newport and Narragansett Bay region during the 1800s, perhaps no other has better captured the mercurial sea or “the miracle of color under a curving wave,”2 than William Trost Richards (1833–1905). Richards spent decades painting in and around Newport, and in a scenic area in nearby Middletown known as “Paradise.” His oil and watercolor seascapes created there and along the New Jersey and British coasts are considered among the finest ever produced. Richards embraced first the tenets of the Hudson River School, later developing a Pre-Raphaelite concern for closely observed natural details. As a mature artist, he combined this truth to nature with an interest in light and atmosphere, attributes that permeate the works he created in the Newport area in the 1890s.

Thirty years ago a Pennsylvania couple purchased a plot of land in the rolling countryside of Bucks County. Their plans were to build a home emulating an early Pennsylvania house. Their mind was swayed, however, after a visit to Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The husband walked into the "Stencil House," an early "saltbox," and had an epiphany, deciding on the spot that he wanted instead a New England-style home, despite their living in Pennsylvania. Their saltbox was custom built for the couple, incorporating eighteenth-century techniques with modern technology. To add elements of authenticity, the couple spent many months acquiring historic components from resources they knew in Connecticut, which their builder integrated into the structure. Twenty-six eighteenth-century white pine doors are used throughout the house, made with board and batten construction with leather washers on the hinges. The 16 to 22-inch wide floorboards and ceiling beams are historic. Old, paper-thin glass was used in making the new windows; a Connecticut craftsman provided frames necessary to achieve the period look. The five fireplaces feeding into the generous center chimney have been outfitted with period firebacks and sets of period tools. The paint used throughout the house has a historic appearance and was made with a secret formula created by the artisan. In homage to the Shelburne Museum, the front hall is painted with stencils replicating, minus the eagles, those applied sometime between 1820 and 1830 to the 1804 Stencil House.

Many of the most beloved American holiday traditions have their roots in southeastern Pennsylvania, where German-speaking immigrants introduced customs such as the Christmas tree, the Easter bunny, and colored eggs.1 Last year Winterthur Museum was fortunate to acquire one of the earliest known American depictions of the Easter bunny—a rare Pennsylvania German fraktur that depicts a leaping rabbit carrying a basket of colorful Easter eggs (Fig. 1).2 This charming drawing can be firmly attributed to schoolmaster and fraktur artist Johann Conrad Gilbert (1734–1812), who emigrated from Germany in 1757 and settled in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. About 1780, he moved to Berks County, where he lived until his death in 1812.3 A similar drawing, also attributed to Gilbert, is in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg. Gilbert likely made both examples as gifts for students as it was common practice for schoolmasters to give their pupils small drawings as a reward, often in March or April, when the school term ended prior to springtime planting.

The gaze of Steven Austin (1793–1836), known as the “Father of Texas” for his role in the colonization of the Lone Star State, is fixed on a wall of Texiana diagonally across the room from where his portrait hangs in this rural farmhouse. Among the ephemera on display is a discharge signed by Samuel Houston (1793–1863), who, as commander-in-chief of the Texas armies, secured the state’s independence in 1836, one of many distinguished accomplishments. Documents and maps that chronicle Texas history, from the pre-republic period of the 1820s and 1830s to when it gained statehood in 1845, cover the wall; documents in another room relate to the Spanish exploration period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The couple who brought this historic material together has been collecting for four decades and, like most people who live in the state, are proud of what it means to be a Texan.

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787) was the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America and progenitor of one of the most influential Pennsylvania German families in history (Fig. 1). This year marks the 300th anniversary of his birth. Three of Henry’s sons also achieved significant renown: Peter (1746–1807) as a general during the American Revolution, Frederick (1750–1801) as the first Speaker of the U.S. House, and Henry Jr. (1753–1815) as a botanist. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, speaking during the 1942 bicentennial of Henry Muhlenberg’s arrival in this country, said, “Clergymen, soldiers, scholars, and statesmen, the Muhlenbergs have represented the best in our national life since the earliest days of the Republic.”1