Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

June 12, 2011

Historic Maine house murals bound for new home

A remarkable series of 19th-century wall paintings is in the process of being moved to the Bridgton museum named for famed Maine muralist Rufus Porter.

By Bob Keyes bkeyes@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

EAST BALDWIN — One evening about 35 years ago, Glenn Haines went for dinner at a neighbor's house just across the way.

He remembers nothing about the meal, but hasn't stopped talking about the house.

The narrow staircase and walls of upstairs bedrooms of the 1838 cape are decorated with elaborate and unusually detailed hand-painted folk-art illustrations. Floor-to-ceiling murals depicting quiet rural scenes adorn the walls, spinning a narrative that suggests an idyllic country life.

Birds sing in blossoming trees, schooners sail under the wisp of a perfect wind, and a hunter aims his rifle at plump prey.

"I didn't know the artist or the history. I was just dumbfounded by the walls. We were mesmerized by those walls," Haines said recently, still obsessed by the murals all these years later.

Haines and his wife, Norma, bought the house in the early 1980s and have served as its custodians since. This spring, they deeded the walls of the house to the Rufus Porter Museum of Bridgton. Conservators are removing the walls by cutting away entire sections of the plaster and lathe construction.

In all, they are trying to remove 17 complete wall units, some as large as 11 feet across and 7 feet tall.

Once removed, the walls – along with trim boards, a fireplace mantel, a stairway and all interior woodwork except the floorboards – will go into storage. Sometime next year, they will be reinstalled in the new Rufus Porter Museum, scheduled to open in a restored 1830s home on Main Street in downtown Bridgton.

The current museum operates in a small red building on the outskirts of town. The building and its contents will be moved to the new location next year as well.

A centerpiece of the new museum will be the walls from the East Baldwin home, reassembled to appear as they are now.

"We lived for those walls for 20 some-odd years," Haines said. "At this point, to see them in a public domain, never to be sold and always available to be viewed – that is a goal of mine. This is what we always wanted to see happen."

The walls are the handiwork of Jonathan D. Poor, Rufus Porter's nephew. Porter was an artist and innovator who was born in Massachusetts but made his home in western Maine. He lived from 1792 to 1884. The museum preserves and celebrates his heritage.

Poor learned the mural trade from Porter, who painted wall murals and portraits for families across New England and beyond. For a period in the early 1820s, it is believed that Poor accompanied his uncle on trips through New England.

Poor signed the wall with his initials in bright red ink: "J,D,P. 1840."

THE BEST OF JONATHAN POOR

These walls represent the very best of his work, said David Ottinger, a conservationist from Arlington, Mass., who is working with the museum on this project.

"A large strength of this grouping is how they work together," he said. "The walls are integrated with the design and architecture of the house. We are delighted they are being preserved. These murals were common, but increasingly they are a vanishing resource. When I first saw this house, my feeling was, 'These walls must be saved.'

"They are the highest example of Jonathan Poor walls. It would be a disaster if they were lost."

Jane Radcliffe, a Porter scholar from Hallowell, said Porter influenced many young painters. The Porter school of landscape murals included many of the teacher's disciples, and his nephew was among the best of them. Poor painted murals in many homes, and this gem in East Baldwin was one of his last.

(Continued on page 2)

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