from the house which was located on the corner of Main and Gay Street. By 1965, the house had been vacant for years and slated for demolition to make way for a hardware store. The murals were purchased and removed by Benjamin Hildebrandt and his friend Francis Holland. The mural walls were braced with 2X4 beams, removed, wrapped under tarps and blankets & stored in basements of nearby homes and in an unused Catholic Church basement. They were later displayed in an antique shop owned by Hildebrandt called Grande Alley Antiques in Porter Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The walls were sold to Louis Giovanni from Newton, MA who put some on display in his restaurant called “Rufus Porter”. The remaining walls were stored in Giovanni’s carriage house. The restaurant didn’t last long and the walls were gifted to Giovanni’s alma mater, Briar Cliff University, a Catholic Franciscan
University in Sioux City, Iowa, where they stayed in storage. In 2002, the fifteen wall panels were sold by Jackson’s International Auctioneers in Cedar Falls to a private concern. They are on loan to the Rufus Porter Museum and it is the hope of the museum that private donations and grants will allow for the purchase and continued exhibition of the Howe House murals in Bridgton. These murals are highly significant in that they are from one of only three houses known to have been signed by Porter, and are the only known dated examples. The stairway mural is signed "R. Porter, 1838" on a rocky outcrop and above that is the signature "S. T. Porter", Stephen Twombley Porter, Rufus Porter's son.
P
orter was also a teacher, and in his book Curious Arts (1825) he discussed the painting of landscapes on the walls of rooms. It is thought that the spectacular quality and detail of these particular murals is due in large part to his instructional demonstration of technique and composition for the enlightenment of a number of nineteenth century muralists. Porter shows an unusually "scientific" approach to creating perspective and depth of field without losing any of the naïve charm of period folk-art. These murals were executed on dry plaster and are in remarkably intact and stable condition. The plaster was applied to hand-riven lath, which appears to be of native chestnut, which is in turn attached to rough sawn chestnut and pine timbers. At the advent of the publication of Rufus Porter Yankee Pioneer by Jean Lipman, some of these murals were exhibited in 1968 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Additionally, the murals have been prominently featured in a number of other publications by Jean Lipman including American Folk Painters of Three Centuries (Lipman & Armstrong) and The Flowering of American Folk Art (Lipman & Winchester). Contribution of information from Linda Carter Lefko
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