1948.27
Self-Portrait
Artist
John Usher Parsons
(Parsonsfield, Maine, 11/1/1806 - 5/21/1874, Wellesley, Massachusetts)
Title
Self-Portrait
Creation Date
1835
Century
19th century
Dimensions
30 1/2 in. x 26 7/16 in. (77.47 cm x 67.15 cm)
Object Type
painting
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
oil on canvas
Credit Line
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of Mrs. W.W. Tuttle and Miss Catherine Tuttle
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
1948.27
Born in Parsonsfield in western Maine, John Usher Parsons graduated from Bowdoin in 1828. A driven evangelist, Parsons became a missionary and pastor, traveling widely to preach. He was also an active publisher who compiled religious tracts. Parsons’s obituary described him as “a man of intellectual power, of enterprising spirit, [and] of constant activity and eminent devotion.” Between 1834 and 1838, when Parsons was recuperating from an illness, he produced about a dozen portraits. Although he was a self-taught artist content to paint in a flat, planar style, Parsons employs symbolic references associated with fine art. He depicts himself in a study surrounded by the books, some with Latin titles, that sustained him. Moreover, by including a panoramic seaport in the background, Parsons both references some of the places where he preached and connects himself to the itinerant networks shaping the young nation at the time.
