CPWP’s Virtual Museum of Painted Walls

Above: This mural in a home in West Boxford, Massachusetts, is attributed to Rufus Porter. The scene includes many of Porter’s signature elements, such as a water scene and a tower-like structure on a hill. Photograph courtesy of Center for Painted Wall Preservation.

by MARGARET GAERTNER

Margaret Gaertner is a historic building consultant in Portland, Maine, who serves as the present Vice President of the Center for Painted Wall Preservation’s board and the Chair of CPWP’s Virtual Museum Committee.

The Center for Painted Wall Preservation (CPWP) was formed in 2016 to research, document, and preserve decoratively painted plaster walls and to raise awareness of this threatened vernacular art form. CPWP records stenciled, muraled, and freehand brush-painted plaster walls created between 1790 and 1860 throughout New England and in upstate New York.

New England’s early painted walls are vulnerable to destruction and loss. A frozen pipe, a leaking toilet, or vibrations from heavy trucks can be catastrophic. While some painted rooms are protected in museums, most are privately owned and their futures are determined by the property owner.

For the past year, CPWP has been working to launch the Virtual Museum of Painted Walls. CPWP’s Virtual Museum, supported with a Dean F. Failey Grant from the Decorative Arts Trust, is a critical tool for bringing attention to and increasing appreciation of this rare and endangered art form, and for documenting these walls for future generations.

Moses Eaton's stencil kit is part of Historic New England’s collection.

To initiate our Virtual Museum, CPWP’s board and advisors identified the best surviving examples and commissioned New York-based company Virtually Real Solutions to create high-quality scans of the spaces. Each room was scanned using Matterport, a three-dimensional image capture platform. The result is an immersive view of a historic interior that allows visitors to move freely through the rooms and to zoom in on various elements of the wall decoration. This format gives visitors the feeling of being in the space and enhances their understanding of the interior beyond what a still photograph can convey.

Visitors to the Virtual Museum can tour, study, and compare twenty examples of historic painted rooms in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. While the noted muralists Rufus Porter; his nephew, Jonathan D. Poor; and New Hampshire stencil artist Moses Eaton are represented in the Virtual Museum, visitors will also be able to view the works of lesser-known artists including Orison Wood, a Maine muralist whose surviving work is found near Auburn, and John Avery, whose works are concentrated near Deerfield, New Hampshire. Many rooms were not signed, and the works of anonymous artists are also included in the Virtual Museum.

The only way to ensure the long-term preservation of painted walls in private homes like this one in Lyme, New Hampshire, is through preservation easements. Several homes protected through Historic New England’s Preservation Easement Program feature painted walls. Photograph by Carl Lindberg, courtesy of Center for Painted Wall Preservation.

While seeing painted walls in person is the best way to appreciate this art form, most of these walls are in private homes in remote locations. Open houses and tours are rare events, and prospective visitors need transportation, disposable income, and a flexible schedule to attend. Once there, stoops at the entry doors and steep and narrow interior stairs are barriers to those with limited mobility. The Virtual Museum allows all guests to view and learn about painted walls.

Historic New England awarded a Community Preservation Grant to the Center for Painted Wall Preservation in 2019. Visit CPWP’s Virtual Museum at www.pwpcenter.org/virtual-museum.