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Preview image of work. oil on canvas,  Southwest View of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 4962
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1961.82

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Southwest View of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

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Artist

John G. Brown (1821 - 1858)

Title

Southwest View of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

Creation Date

ca. 1822

Century

19th century

Dimensions

30 1/8 in. x 37 1/8 in. (76.52 cm x 94.3 cm)

Object Type

painting

Creation Place

North America, United States, Maine

Medium and Support

oil on canvas

Credit Line

Gift of Harold L. Berry, Class of 1901

Copyright

Public Domain

Accession Number

1961.82

Bowdoin College was in its third decade when Boston artist John G. Brown visited in the 1820s to view its art collection, established by James Bowdoin III’s 1813 bequest. From sketches made about 1822, Brown created the earliest known oil painting of the campus. From left to right, he depicted the college’s first buildings: Massachusetts Hall (1799–1802), Winthrop Hall (1822), the Chapel (1805), and Maine Hall (1808/1822). Frederic Trench, known locally as “Uncle Trench,” appears in the foreground pushing his wheelbarrow loaded with plain and sugared gingerbread and root beer to sell to the students. Remembered as a “quiet, painstaking old man,” Nathaniel Hawthorne used him as the model for his character Uncle Venner in The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

Keywords: landscape (representation)   college campus   fence   image of Maine   tree