1961.82
Southwest View of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine
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).