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The tavern customers were a democratic blend of local townspeople and peddlers like Porter, who believed that “to sit by a tavern hearth in those days was to have an ear to the world,” (Lipman, p. A typical tavern supper consisted of beefsteaks, broiled fowl, ham, cold turkey, toast broiled in melted butter, waffles, tea, coffee, and rum.
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The taverns offered good food and good company. In early-to mid-nineteenth-century America, taverns were a stopping place for peddlers of all kinds. Taverns not only supplied him with an income, but often he’d paint tavern walls and floors for room and board. He was a persuasive salesman, telling the tavern owners and farmers that mural art was better because wallpaper “is apt to get torn off, and often affords behind it a resting place for various kinds of house insects (Lipman, p. RUFUS PORTER Haverhill, March 31, 1821.”Īt a time when the wealthy were decorating their walls with imported wallpaper, Porter offered a more affordable alternative for Americas who couldn’t afford the expensive wallpaper but very much craved the finer things. ( No Likeness, no Pay.) Those who request it will be waited on at their respective places of abode. Brown’s Tavern, where he will remain two to three Days longer.
RUFUS PORTER FULL
The Subscriber respectfully informs the Ladies and Gentlemen of Haverhill and its vicinity, that he continues to paint correct Likenesses in full Colours for two Dollars at his room at Mr. In Jean Lipman’s book, Rufus Porter: Yankee Pioneer (p.5), she reproduces one of Porter’s advertisements: Porter would arrive in a town, set up a makeshift studio, often in a tavern, and hand out leaflets advertising his services as a portraitist and a mural painter. He traveled on foot, carrying nothing but his painter’s kit on his back. What I discovered about this extraordinary man gave me a window into a little known way of life, a glimpse into the spirit of a newly formed country, and a way to make the nineteenth-century section of The Lost Artist come alive.įrom 1819–1845, Rufus Porter’s wandered up and down the east coast from New England to Virginia plying his trade as an itinerant painter. I think the article said something about wisps of clouds being revealed.īefore calling her for an interview, I began reading books and articles about Rufus Porter. The photo of her perched on a ladder painstakingly removing the wallpaper stayed in my mind, as did the splendid Porter mural she was restoring. My online search led me to a Massachusetts art restorer who was in the process of uncovering and restoring a Rufus Porter mural that had been painted on the walls of a house in the nineteenth century.
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It was vital that I understood mural restoration and was familiar with nineteenth-century American murals. I was embarking on a story told not only in words but also in images. The murals are concealed under about one-hundred-and seventy-five years of wallpaper and paint. That episode confirmed my concept for the book: that the secret to finding a sixteenth-century American art treasure is hidden in four murals. So I knew that it was possible to do this. I’d seen an episode of “This Old House” where a historically valuable mural had been restored after it was discovered under layers and layers of wallpaper. I learned about Rufus Porter while researching contemporary art restorers who specialized in mural restoration. And this is what intrigues me about the writing process, when you begin a book, you just never know who’ll end up in it. Though I suspect I might have seen his work somewhere, maybe, maybe not.
![rufus porter rufus porter](https://www.themagazineantiques.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/5b-Joseph-adams-porter.jpg)
Prior to writing the book, I’d never heard of him. Rufus Porter (1792-1884), the nineteenth-century American muralist, became part of The Lost Artist by happenstance.