Bowdoin College Museum of Art

John Badger Bachelder, 1825—1894

A New Hampshire native born in Gilmanton, John Badger Bachelder was educated at Gilmanton Academy and attended Captain Alden Partridge’s Military School in nearby Pembroke. From 1849 to 1853 he taught military tactics at the Pennsylvania Military Institute in Reading, Pennsylvania. In 1853 Bachelder returned to New Hampshire to begin his career as an artist. Between 1854 and 1863 he drew and painted town and city views, thirty-five of which were produced as lithographs. All but four depicted New England communities. 

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Bachelder became attached to the Union Army as a battlefield artist. Both during and after the war, he devoted himself to commemorating the conflict’s major military engagements through paintings and prints. He was especially well known for his scenes of the Battle of Gettysburg. He died in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, in 1894.

Truman C. Bartholomew, 1809—1867

Born in Vershire, Vermont, Truman C. Bartholomew was the son of inventor Erastus Bartholomew and the brother of William N. Bartholomew, a painter and art educator. Truman pursued his career in Boston as a painter of panoramic views —both near and far— as well as theater scenery. His view of Jerusalem was exhibited in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1847, and he worked with Minard Lewis in 1858 to produce the scenery for a play about the Arctic voyages of explorer Elisha Kent Kane. He died in Melrose, Massachusetts, in 1867.

Edwin Lee Browne, 1827—1891

Born in Milo, Maine, and raised in Bangor, Edwin Lee Browne prepared for college at the Bangor Boys High School. At his graduation from Bowdoin College in 1846, he presented a speech on church architecture. At the time, the college’s ambitious new chapel in the Romanesque Revival style, designed by Richard Upjohn, was under construction. Browne studied law in Bangor in 1846 and 1847 but soon turned to architecture, studying in Boston in 1848 and 1849. Between 1849 and 1859 he practiced architecture with William Washburn in Boston and Benjamin S. Deane in Bangor. Browne moved to Chicago in 1860 to found what became America’s largest street light manufacturing company. An advocate for preventing cruelty to animals, he served as president of the American Humane Association. He died in Chicago in 1891.

John G. Brown, died 1858

John G. Brown appears as an artist in Boston’s city directories from 1821 to 1858 and is listed in the 1827 exhibition catalogue of the Boston Athenaeum but little else has been learned about him. A petition for the administration of his estate establishes his death in 1858.

Thomas Rice Burnham, 1834—1893

Born in Winslow, Maine, Thomas Rice Burnham began his lifelong career as a photographer in Bangor with his older brother John U. P. Burnham. In 1858 Burnham opened his own studio in Portland, where he captured the attention of the press and the public for the quality and size of his portrait and landscape images in the new medium of paper prints made from glass plate negatives. Joined in Portland in 1859 by his brother John, they formed the partnership of Burnham Brothers. In 1862 Thomas moved to Boston, where he continued to practice photography until his death in 1893. 

Esteria Butler, 1814—1891

Esteria Butler was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts. In 1824 her family moved to Waterville, Maine, when her father, the Reverend John Butler took a teaching post.  Soon, he became the pastor of the Baptist Church in East Winthrop. Esteria learned to paint at the female academy run by her father there. By the age of eighteen, she was painting miniature portraits of friends and family members, including Lucy and Jonathan Pullen of Winthrop and Almira and James Fillibrown, her sister and brother-in-law.    

In 1836 Esteria Butler painted views of Bowdoin and Waterville (Colby) colleges. These pictures served as the basis for the lithographs of the two campuses made by Thomas Moore of Boston. Her painting of Newton Theological Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts, also became the subject of a Moore lithograph.

In 1837 Esteria Butler married Professor Jonathan Farnum of Waterville College. Two years later the couple moved to Georgetown, Kentucky, where Jonathan taught at Georgetown College and Esteria created an oil painting of the school. The Farnums established a female academy where Esteria taught drawing and painting. She died in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1891. 

Mary O’Brien Dunning, 1782—1853

Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Mary O’Brien married Robert Dunlap Dunning and spent most of her life in Brunswick, Maine. During the mid 1830s, she served as both the principal and a teacher at the Girls High School. She died at the home of her son, Reverend Andrew Dunning, in Thompson, Connecticut, in 1853. Her obituary in the Brunswick Telegraph for November 12, 1853, noted that “she was characterized by strong common sense, a remarkable amiableness, and an evenness of temper.”

James Emery, 1820—1899

James Emery was born in Belfast, Maine. At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to F. C. Raymond, the local watchmaker and jeweler. In 1843 Emery established his own watch, clock, and jewelry business in partnership with P. P. Quimby. A year later Emery moved his business north to Bucksport, where he resided for the balance of his life.

A talented artist, Emery was influenced by his friendship with Fitz Henry Lane, the noted marine painter. Emery made topographical views of Belfast and Bucksport in the form of drawings, watercolors, and lithographs. His interest in landscape and design extended to the creation of drawing devices, and he corresponded with Rufus Porter, editor of the Scientific American, about efficient ways to determine perspective in landscape painting. Emery is remembered as well for his design of such Bucksport landmarks as his home Linwood Cottage, the Torrent Engine Company, the First Unitarian Church, and Emery Hall. 

Sara Peters Grozelier, 1821—1907

Sara Peters Grozelier was born in North Andover, Massachusetts, the younger sister of Clarissa Peters Russell, the noted miniature painter. Between 1847 and 1883, Sara was active in Boston as a miniaturist, a painter, and a lithographer. She married artist Leopold Grozelier in 1855 and died in North Andover in 1907.

John S. Hendee, 1825—1899

Born in Pittsford, Vermont, John S. Hendee studied as a young man with Mathew Brady, a leading American photographer based in New York City. Hendee’s daguerreotype of a California stage stop indicates that he visited the west early in his career. By 1853 he had established a photographic studio in Brunswick, Maine. That year he made the daguerreotype of Bowdoin College upon which Tappan and Bradford based their lithograph of the campus. 

In 1856 John Hendee moved his studio to Augusta, where he worked until his death in 1899. He made many cartes-de-visit and cabinet portraits as well as several memorable landscape photographs of Augusta, including the Old South Church before it burned in 1864, the Cony Military Hospital of 1864—65, and the Return of the Nineteenth Maine Regiment on June 5, 1865.

John William Hill, 1812—1879

John William Hill was born in London, England, and came to America with his family in 1819. He received his artistic training from his father, John Hill, an aquatint engraver. After stays in Philadelphia and New York City, the Hills settled in West Nyack, New York, in 1836.

Hill began his career as a topographic artist for the New York Geological Survey. Later he was employed by the Smith Brothers to paint views of American cities for their lithographs. In the mid-1850s, he read John Ruskin’s Modern Painters and adopted the Pre-Raphaelite style of naturalism for his art. From that point on, he devoted himself to painting landscapes and studies of birds and flowers. He died in West Nyack in 1879.

Samuel V. Holman, life dates not known

According to Boston city directories, Samuel V. Holman was active as a miniaturist there between 1841 and 1844. He painted miniatures in Bangor in 1842.

John Bradley Hudson, Jr., 1832—1903

Born in Portland, Maine, John Bradley Hudson, Jr., received his initial artistic instruction from his father, a furniture painter and cabinetmaker. He also studied with the Bath artist Philip S. Harris and the Portland portrait painter Charles O. Cole. Hudson began his career as a portrait and landscape painter in Lewiston, where he maintained a studio in 1856 and 1857. Upon his return to Portland in 1858, he became one of the city’s most respected artists, working there until the 1890s. 

Hudson specialized in watercolors, but created several major oil paintings, the most notable of which was a view of Simonton Cove in Cape Elizabeth in 1878. He founded the Brush’un painting group with fellow artists Charles F. Kimball and George F. Morse. Hudson served briefly in the Civil War, helped found the Maine School for the Deaf, and was a popular singer at churches and masonic meetings. From 1855 to 1881 he kept an illustrated journal, which is now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He died in South Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1903.

Warren G. Hyde, life dates not known

Warren G. Hyde appears as an engraver in the Boston city directories between 1857 and 1860.

Cyrus William King, 1819—1881

Born in Bath, Maine, Cyrus William King was the artistic son of William King, Maine’s first governor who long served Bowdoin College as a trustee and overseer. As a young boy, King frequented the Kennebec River waterfront, observing the various activities associated with shipbuilding, which he later celebrated in his View of Bath, Me. / From the Opposite Ferry Landing. Beginning in 1828 King learned to draw while a student at a progressive boy’s school in Boston.   Following his graduation, Cyrus remained there as a drawing master, seizing the discipline as a life’s calling. Returning to Maine in the 1840s, King opened a studio and taught briefly in Portland, before relocating to Brunswick. 

King also engaged in a wide range of activities, including as drill master for Bowdoin College and building miniature mills and lathes. At the Sagadahoc Agricultural and Horticultural Exhibition in 1868, he “carried off the palm for the display of curious paintings, draftings, and inventions. His sharp, eye grey is ever on the alert for something new and novel.” His Illustrated Dictionary, drawn between 1850 and 1853 and depicting nearly 13,000 objects, was heralded during his lifetime and survives at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (See Laura F. Sprague, “Spectacle,” in Joachim Homann, ed., Why Draw? 500 Years of Drawings and Watercolors at Bowdoin College [Brunswick, Me.: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2017], 74—77).

Franklin Bacon Ladd, 1815—1898

Franklin Bacon Ladd was born in Augusta, Maine. At the age of eighteen in January 1834, Ladd advertised his services as a portrait painter in the local Kennebec Journal. During the 1830s and 40s, he took to the road, traveling to New Orleans, New York City, and Philadelphia, where he painted portraits and exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Augusta in 1848 to paint portraits and, again, in 1853 to make drawings for his lithograph of the city. Ladd later established himself as a portrait painter in Brooklyn, New York, where he is remembered for his paintings of the city’s mayors. He died there in 1898.

Fitz Henry Lane, 1804—1865

A Gloucester, Massachusetts, native, Fitz Henry Lane moved in 1832 to Boston to learn lithography. He spent the next seventeen years in the city working as a lithographer, including a brief partnership with John W. A. Scott from 1845 to 1847. Beginning in the 1840s, he painted landscapes, marines, and ship portraits. From 1849 until his death in 1865, Lane lived in Gloucester, where he devoted himself to painting his local surroundings as well as Boston Harbor and the Maine coast. Today he is regarded as one of the masters of nineteenth-century American marine painting as well as a major lithographic artist of the period.

Harley DeWitt Nichols, 1859—1939

Born in Barton, Wisconsin, Harley DeWitt Nichols lived in Brooklyn, New York, where he worked as an architectural illustrator for books and magazines, especially Century and Harper’s. In the early twentieth century, he was the artist for several bird’s-eye views of American college and university campuses, including Bowdoin, that were produced as photo engravings by the W.T. Littig Company of New York City. Nichols died in Laguna Beach, California, in 1939.

Charles Jefferds Noyes, 1806—1882

Charles Jefferds Noyes was born in Wiscasset, Maine. At the age of thirteen, he moved to Yarmouth, where he worked in a general store. In 1829 he relocated to Brunswick to operate a general store and a foundry.

By 1845 Noyes had become a civil engineer and helped develop waterpower for textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Upon his return to Brunswick, he began laying out the lines for several Maine railroads, which became a major part of his work as a civil engineer. He also surveyed property lines for land transfers and the settling of boundary disputes. 

A man of many interests and talents, Noyes was also known as an organist, a mathematician, an astronomer, and an avid reader. When he died, the Brunswick Telegraph for January 27, 1882, eulogized him as “esteemed for his marked intelligence, his thorough honesty of purpose, and the integrity of his life.”

William B. Pierce, 1830—1879

William B. Pierce was born in Monmouth, Maine. From the 1850s until 1873, he was active as a photographer in Brunswick. He engaged in portrait and landscape photography, producing stereo views of local Brunswick and Topsham subjects. When he died at the age of forty-nine, the Brunswick Telegraph for September 19, 1879, remembered him as being “well-skilled in his business, a man of most modest and quiet manners, but thoroughly genial in his demeanor and of the strictest integrity in his business relationships.”

Albert Ruger, 1829—1899

Born in Prussia, Albert Ruger emigrated to the United States, where he first worked as a mason. While serving in an Ohio regiment during the Civil War, he drew views of Union camp sites. After the war, he settled in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he began his artistic career by sketching Michigan cities. Between the 1860s and the 1890s, Ruger made numerous bird’s—eye views in twenty—two states and Canada, many of which were published by J. J. Stoner of Madison, Wisconsin. In 1877 and 1878, Ruger created at least fifteen views of Maine towns and cities, including one of Brunswick and Topsham.

Edward Ruggles, 1818—1867

Edward Ruggles was born in Rochester, Massachusetts, where his father was a banker and businessman. Edward began studying medicine at Bowdoin College’s Medical School of Maine in 1840-41, continuing his education in Paris in 1845. Upon returning to the United States in 1847, Ruggles established a practice in Brooklyn, New York. That year he joined the American Art Union, and by 1851 was an honorary member of the National Academy of Design.

Ruggles’s early interest in art, reflected by his view of Bowdoin College, developed in the 1850s into a serious pursuit of landscape painting. An inheritance from his father in 1857 enabled him to retire from medicine and devote himself to his art. During the last decade of his life, he painted landscapes of Cape Cod, the White Mountains, Canada, and Europe. His small oil paintings were known as “Ruggles’ Gems.” At his death, the New York Times observed on March 12, 1867, that he “appreciated nature and American scenery as few artists have had the soul to do” and praised his work for its “delicacy, brilliancy, and purity.” 

George H. Swift, 1827—1893

George H. Swift was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Listed as a teacher in the 1850 U. S. census, Swift pursued his artistic interests in Maine with his painting of a panorama of Franklin County in 1851, providing the artwork for lithographs of Belfast in 1853 and Rockland in 1854. During the 1850s he married Matilda Dennison, and the couple settled in her native town of Brunswick by 1863. There Swift continued his career as a portrait and fancy painter and worked in his wife’s family boxmaking business until his death in 1893.

John Rogers Vinton, 1801—1847

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, John Rogers Vinton entered West Point Academy at the age of fourteen, graduating two-and-a-half years later. He became a career officer in the U.S. Army, rising from the rank of third lieutenant to major. 

An accomplished scholar, Major Vinton studied languages, theology, physics, and ethics. Brown University awarded him an M.A. degree in 1837. Painting portraits and landscapes, he made a series of pictures of the Seminole War based on his participation in the conflict. He fought in the Mexican War, dying from wounds received at the Battle of Vera Cruz in 1847.

Alexander H. Wallace, life dates not known

Alexander H. Wallace advertised as a miniature painter in Bangor, Maine, in June 1835 and was listed as a portrait painter in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1837 New York City directory.   

Edwin Whitefield, 1816—1892

Edwin Whitefield was born in Ludworth, Dorset, England, emigrating to America about 1840. From 1846 to 1857 he traveled across Canada and the northern United States sketching city views for a series of lithographs that he titled Whitefield’s Original Views of North American Cities and Scenery. After living in Minnesota in the late 1850s and Chicago in the early 1860s, he settled in the Boston area. From 1870 to 1888 he produced several lithographs of New England towns and wrote and illustrated Homes of Our Forefathers, a series of books documenting seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England houses and buildings. He died in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1892.