Shapleigh Catalog

S H APLEIGH from the inside out

The Museum of White Mountain Art at Jackson

Shapleigh from the inside out is published on the occasion of an exhibition at The Museum of White Mountain Art at Jackson from October 10th, 2013 to February 1st, 2014.

Jackson Historical Society PO Box 8 (23 Black Mountain Rd) Jackson, NH, 03846 603-383-4060 www.jacksonhistory.org info@jacksonhistory.org Copyright 2013, all rights reserved Exhibition Curator: Warren Schomaker Catalog design: Son & Daughter Design Photographs by: Linda Little, Erik Koppell, Robert J. Steinberg and Anthony Moore Painting Conservation.

Catalog Editor: Jamie LaFleur First edition with a printing of 400 Cover: Old Barn in Conway NH, 1879, Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16”, Signed and date lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879”, Inscribed en verso: “Mote Mt from Old Barn, Conway NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Back Cover: Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1883, Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16”, Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883”, Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” About the cover design: The backdrop image which wraps from the back cover to the front cover is of the reverse of the painting titled Old Barn in Bridgeton, Maine, 1883 (p.38, #20). The title, location, date and signature are found on nearly all of Shapleigh’s paintings.

The mark making, or calligraphy used by Shapleigh is beautiful, executed with great intent, and had a great deal of meaning to him. His signature is part of the work of art and the fragment seen on the front cover allows us to see that mark, not as a signature but as the act of an authoritative artist.

S H APLEIGH from the inside out Essays by Charles O. Vogel & Bob Cottrell

FOREWARD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Jackson Historical Society is pleased to offer this Exhibition, “Shapleigh from the Inside Out” in our Museum of White Mountain Art at Jackson, New Hampshire. Frank Henry Shapleigh (1842-1906) is well-known for his paintings of the inside of barns and kitchens looking out through an open door or window to the scene outside, hence the title of the exhibition.

Over the years there has been a lively debate on whether Shapleigh painted real barns with real landscapes or married imagined barns with real landscapes, generating strong opinions both ways. Our display of twenty-five Shapleigh barn and kitchen paintings provides an opportunity to make side-by-side comparisons of the details. In the exhibit there are only two cases with known buildings in the outside scenes that are still standing, as are the two barns, in which positive identification can be made. When Shapleigh named the scene the challenge is to find the barn, or where it once stood, with just a ridge line in the landscape as a guide.

Included in this catalogue are essays by two respected historians. Charles Vogel authors an essay on the life and art of Shapleigh. Robert Cottrell writes on the details of barns in Northern New Hampshire, when early barns were built in the “English” style, and then changed to a “Yankee” or “New England” style by the late 19 th century.

We are indebted to twelve collectors who have generously loaned their paintings. To Barbara (Bonnie) MacAdam of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College who arranged for permission to show images of two paintings from their collection. And to the New Hampshire Historical Society for permission to show images of the inside of Shapleigh’s studios in his house in Jackson and in St. Augustine, Florida, where he usually spent the winter months.

We have had the help of many who collaborated in assisting with the Exhibition and we owe thanks to Charles and Gloria Vogel, Robert Cottrell, Linda Hall-Little, Andy and Linda McLane, Erik Koeppel, and Randy Bennett of the Bethel, Maine , Historical Society. Special thanks are due to Jamie LaFleur of The Banks Gallery, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for making this catalogue a reality.

G. Warren Schomaker President, Jackson Historical Society

Charles O. Vogel

ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT: Frank H. Shapleigh’s Barn and Kitchen Interiors Frank H. Shapleigh (1842–1906) was a painter of places. He actually stood at the location he sketched and painted so that the subject was accurately represented on his canvas. This is not to argue that he did not produce studio paintings from earlier sketches, lacked imagination, or the use of limited “artistic license,” but rather to argue that his paintings reflected the physical reality as he saw it. Today we can literally stand where he stood and compare his paintings with the landscape. Shapleigh lived and traveled to the places he painted. He painted true to life—real world landscapes, real life, real places. This essay will maintain that Shapleigh’s barn and kitchen interiors, like all of his works, were accurate representations of the buildings, the interiors, and the landscapes adjacent to them—that Shapleigh’s paintings are a faithful reproduction of the scene. As one publication observed, “[Shapleigh] was pre-eminently a painter of places...and as much a historian as he was painter...” 1 This thesis will be supported by the following points: first, Shapleigh’s landscapes are accurate representations of the scenes painted—stand where he stood today and the scene remains the same; second, the barn interiors and the views from them are as he depicted them; third, contemporaries of Shapleigh saw his images as accurate representations of physical reality; fourth, the furniture and interior furnishings of the barns and kitchens were accurately depicted and consistent with mid- to late-nineteenth-century rural America; and finally, while no kitchens that he represented have been located to compare with the paintings, the depiction of them is consistent with late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century building practices in rural America.

INTRODUCTION: Theme, Perspective, and History Farmyard and interior paintings are not original to America: they have a long and distinguished history. As they did with landscapes, many American painters brought freshness to the genre: a sharpness, crispness, and perspective incorporating the elements of technique, light, pointof-view, and decidedly American subjects. Shapleigh capitalized on his love of antiques and architecture to produce a series of barn and kitchen paintings. He combined his interest in what were even then antiques in kitchen and barn interiors with the sense of place provided by the landscape seen through an open door or window—with a mountain or seascape that placed the interior into a context.

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There is a long tradition of American and European artists depicting home and farm interiors. 2 Kitchens and barnyards have been of interest to artists dating from the Renaissance. Certainly the American painters who studied with a European master would have seen these paintings in the major London and Paris museums. 3 The early years of the nineteenth century witnessed artists producing historical and religious paintings, portraits, and the beginnings of landscape paintings. Genre painting—scenes of ordinary people from everyday life presented in a non-idealized realistic manner, at work or play—differs from landscape, portraiture, still life, religious, or historical themes.

In the decades preceding the Civil War, genre scenes gained in popularity. Winslow Homer’s Civil War illustrations featuring the soldier’s life and his seascapes promoted this style. 4 During the middle third of the nineteenth century, scenes of agrarian life were painted by an increasingly large number of American artists, including William Sidney Mount (1807–1868), Eastman Johnson (1824–1906), George Henry Durrie (1820–1863), Harrison Bird Brown (1831–1915), and Winslow Homer (1836–1910); such scenes also appeared in the lithographs of Currier & Ives and other print makers. These paintings and prints found a ready market with collectors interested in images of a time passing by; to a large degree, they accurately represented agricultural life.

It can be argued that Shapleigh was America’s most productive painter of interiors, painting a selection of pictures which had interesting roots: kitchen and barnyard scenes representing rural life. The very quantity of his interior paintings is a testament to his interests, their popularity, and collectability. Shapleigh recognized interiors as a worthy subject for creating appealing nostalgic views of culture, showing the lifestyle of a time gone by. From 1874 to 1901, nearly his entire professional artistic career, Shapleigh painted old kitchens and barns in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. 5 The second half of the nineteenth century was the greatest period for grand resort hotel culture.

The grand hotels and their wealthy patrons attracted artists to New Hampshire’s White Mountains to paint natural wonders. Shapleigh, one of the most prolific painters of the time, joined the legions of artists who made the White Mountains their summer home. His renderings of its scenic wonders, of man’s taming of the wilderness, and subjects attractive to New Hampshire’s mountain visitors were his major contributions to White Mountain art.

Shapleigh’s images offer a contrast between two themes: the majestic mountain vistas that appealed to the hotel clientele, and intimate rural subjects. With an artistic familiarity gained from careful observations of man’s settlements and nature, Shapleigh’s works featured nature’s wild qualities and expansive mountain landscapes with pastoral fields, running brooks, picturesque waterfalls, irregular mountain profiles, and classic New England farms. Like many artists, Shapleigh painted every aspect. But he went a step further, painting the personal, sentimental, and intimate as expressed in both landscapes and interior paintings. There is also a personal quality in his paintings. Writing about his watercolors, The Boston Evening Transcript stated that

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“[Shapleigh’s] mountain landscapes are a pleasing combination in style of the old-fashioned and the new. There is much delicacy of color, agreeable tone, and a good atmosphere effect...” 6 Shapleigh joined the intimate and majestic in his painting; in his selection of home he chose rural.

While he visited and lived in large cities in both America and Europe, he chose rural Jackson, New Hampshire, to visit at the beginning of the summer tourist season. The effect of Jackson on Shapleigh was comforting. The town was small, friendly, intimate, and welcoming to residents.

It also offered picturesque charm, majestic mountains, and a pleasant pace of life. Shapleigh had a complex and contradictory nature straddling the line between two diametrically opposing lifestyles. Yet as a grand resort hotel artist-in-residence at New Hampshire’s Crawford House and Florida’s Hotel Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine, Shapleigh’s artistic role was a very important component of the overall resort hotel experience. He had many friends and socialized with the well-to-do, businessmen, industrialists, civic leaders, theologians, and politicians. He was “much liked” and in 1886 received well-earned high artistic praise. In that year The White Mountain Echo and Tourist Register stated, “As an artist [Shapleigh] stands deservedly high.... He seems to win popular favor to a greater extent than any other artist who has been in the habit of coming to the mountains.” 7 Additionally, the Shapleighs were the recipients of a time honored Crawford House tradition: “Mr. Shapleigh, the artist, and Mrs. Shapleigh arrived at the Crawford House, last Monday,” the Echo reported, “[and] the first gun of the season was fired in honor of their return. Mr. Shapleigh has occupied his studio and has some beautiful sketches of White Mountain scenery on exhibition.” 8 The bulk of Shapleigh’s paintings were subjects offered for sale to clients at the grand resort hotels, and represented local views which would be intimately familiar to the guests. That is how he made a living while in New Hampshire and Florida. In Boston he exhibited at the Boston Art Club with all of its social trappings. In Jackson the distinction between personal and topographical subjects became clearer. While he stayed at Jackson’s Wentworth Hall or the Jackson Falls House, his paintings featured fewer of the majestic canvases and more with rural settings.

During the shoulder seasons (when the crowds left one locale, but had not yet arrived at the other—generally the spring and fall) he was frequently in rural Maine or Cohasset and Scituate (south of Boston) where he painted more personal interiors and farm scenes. 9 Shapleigh formed his own impressions from intimate examination of American country life.

Shapleigh was a friendly, social man with a pleasant, genial character and charm of manner.

Marjorie Trickey March (1892–1984), daughter of William W. Trickey, co-owner and manager of the Jackson Falls House, in a 1972 interview recalled Mr. Shapleigh as a very popular, friendly, kind man who was well-known and liked by everyone in the community. 10 With his charm and friendly demeanor, it is no wonder that he was welcomed into private homes to paint the owner’s kitchens and barns. He connected with rural folks as well as the urban.

Shapleigh has left historians very few written records. The sparse primary sources available for

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research on Shapleigh’s kitchen and barn paintings are limited to the paintings themselves, a few sketchy newspaper articles, and studio photographs. There are no sketchbooks, letters, or original writings on his kitchen or barn paintings. Shapleigh did, however, title his paintings with specific locations. Examining the total body of Shapleigh’s paintings over the course of his lifetime in New England, Florida, California, and Europe confirms that he was remarkably consistent and faithful to his subjects, and that is also true of his barn and kitchen scenes. Shapleigh’s kitchens and barns are authentic; they are real kitchens and real barns with real artifacts.

An 1875 newspaper reported that Shapleigh’s paintings “show a fine bit of realism...” 11 There is seemingly a contradiction with Shapleigh’s selection of subjects; they have a certain uniqueness, but there is also a similarity to them. Perhaps this is a result of his personal interests in specific kitchen and barn construction or layout and the commonness of implements found in nineteenth-century kitchens and barns. Shapleigh’s kitchen and barn interiors reflect commonplace middle-class rural culture. Many of his contemporaries painted a variety of rural scenes: farm animals, barnyards, and barn and kitchen interiors. In America, Eastman Johnson painted interiors, usually highlighting an aspect of family and community life. 12 Thomas Worthington Whittredge’s (1820–1910) The Club House Sitting Room at Balsam Lake, Catskills, 1886 (private collection) incorporates many of the same features employed by Shapleigh: furniture and fireplace tools, everyday kitchen utensils, a cat by the hearth, and light through an open window.

Wesley Elbridge Webber (1839–1914) and Harrison Bird Brown, who both actively painted in the White Mountains and were certainly familiar with each other’s work, also produced interiors. Born in Gardiner, Maine, Wesley Webber painted Interior of a Fishing Shack Looking Out to Sea (private collection) with qualities similar to Shapleigh’s work. Harrison Brown’s Barn Interior, c. 1870 (Fruitlands Museum), and Barn Interior, c. 1880 (Portland Museum of Art), are the closest in theme, perspective, and subject to Shapleigh’s barns. 13 The preponderance of Shapleigh’s interior paintings are ten by sixteen inch oils, on Frost and Adams canvases, and originally with Hastings and Davenport frames. An important and charming feature of Shapleigh paintings is that he was very consistent at signing and dating the front of the canvas, then re-signing and writing the title on the verso. This enables a certainty of date, location, and the subject depicted. Variation in his titles does exist with some regularity. For example, Shapleigh might title a painting Old Barn in Jackson, New Hampshire and a similar painting Old Barn at Jackson, New Hampshire (author’s emphasis).

In 1868 twenty-five year old Shapleigh studied in the atelier of French artist Émile Lambinet (1815–1877) following the master’s style, techniques, and perceptions. Benjamin Champney’s assessment of Lambinet could equally be applied to Shapleigh’s work: “The works of Lambinet were sweet and beautiful in color and drawing, and portrayed lovely bits of pastoral landscape.

I had always considered them little gems, without pretension to an ideal type of art, but full of simple truth, translated from nature...” 14

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INTERIORS: A Weakness for Old, Quaint, and Graceful Furnishings Shapleigh had an eye for quaint furnishings of earlier generations. He collected and used eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century furniture and accessories in his home and studios. These items may be plainly seen in photographs depicting the interior of his Crawford House studio, his Ponce de Leon studio, plus his studio and the great room of his Jackson home, “Maple Knoll.” 15 Similar furnishings appear repeatedly in his interior paintings.

From 1877 to 1893 Shapleigh was artist-in-residence at New Hampshire’s famed Crawford House.

In 1880 a one-room studio was constructed for him adjacent to the hotel. A photograph of the studio’s interior clearly shows three styles of Windsor chairs: a fan-back side chair, a comb-back armchair, and a comb-back rocker. There is also a side table, Persian rug, ornate room dividing screen, fireplace with vases on the mantel, and fireplace implements including fireplace fender, andirons, and shovel. On an easel is an unframed barn scene and on the walls hang five framed paintings including another barn view. 16

5 Frank H. Shapleigh Studio, Crawford House, New Hampshire, c 1890. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society. An unframed barn interior sits on the easel, center left and a framed barn interior hangs on the wall far right. “(Shapleigh’s) studio, situated near the entrance to Idlewild, is tastefully fitted up, and contains many choice bits of mountain scenery, which are eagerly sought by visitors to the Crawford and surrounding hotels. His studio is always open to visitors.” ECHO, July 12, 1890.

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From 1888 through 1892 Shapleigh was also artist-in-residence at the Hotel Ponce de Leon, built

by Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler (1830–1913), in St. Augustine, Florida. Just as at his Crawford House studio, Shapleigh furnished his southern studio with collectables. The Tatler said as much, reporting, “[Mr. Shapleigh’s] studio contains so many beautiful articles of interest besides the pictures...” 17 It did indeed. Shapleigh’s studio in Florida held many pieces of antique furniture, including a piano, an American drawer-front secretary, several early chairs, a Persian rug, corner card table, standard fireplace tools, and many items on the mantel. Of course, there were also painting supplies and paintings, including two easels, numerous paintings (both framed and unframed), plus some in shipping boxes. Shapleigh also brought his New England paintings to Florida. The St. Augustine News published, “Mr. F. H. Shapleigh’s studio was very attractive with its quaint old piano and cabinets, its delightful pictures and pretty decorations.

The most noticeable pictures were two New England interiors, the one a kitchen, its chimney crane and old furniture faithfully depicted and making a soft, harmonizing picture; the other was equally good, being an old barn, with hay and other accessories, faithfully painted.” 18 The next year The Tatler reported, “Mr. Shapleigh has some beautiful pictures in his studio, but does not confine himself to his love of the beautiful to his pictures. He has a weakness for old, quaint and graceful furniture which adds greatly to the pleasure of a visit to his studio.” 19 Virtually the same types of antique furnishings were found in his Jackson home including a grandfather clock and a sculptural relief above the studio’s fireplace. “But the great attraction of it all is the manner in which Mr. Shapleigh has furnished the interior [of his home],” Benjamin Champney wrote. “It is like a great museum of curios brought from most quarters of the world and placed in delightful confusion in every nook and corner of the artistically arranged rooms.

He has a natural love for the surroundings, of the furniture of past days, the quaint old bits our grandfather delighted in, and knows how to select what is most artistic and beautiful.” 20 In a letter to her family, Miss Grace Bickford wrote, “[Shapleigh’s Jackson] studio was almost as good as a museum. Then Mr. and Mrs. S. took us out to their big room which is filled with rare, old curios. Dutch clock, English furniture, and all sorts of curious things. From there to see the view from the piazza, then to see the sundial, and then out under the trees to see the kittens and on to the Japanese bridge.” 21 The home’s interior was further documented by Kenneth Wright who recorded in his journal, “The old fashioned, high desk under the lofty north window in the studio, the fireplace on the western wall with its old-fashioned iron crane and black Hessian soldier andirons, the high backed arm chairs of every pattern, and unpainted ancient table along the opposite wall beneath the hanging rows of Uncle F[rank]’s pictures that are for sale. Among these are English cottages, glimpse of wharves, [and] an old fort at St.Augustine.” 22 It is perfectly obvious, when we examine his paintings and do a comparison of furnishings that he owned and painted, that Shapleigh loved antiques. An inventory of the items found in all his paintings (interiors, farms, European, Florida, and watercolors) show an abundance of useful objects and items with which he was imminently familiar. Shapleigh not only liked the fur-

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nishings of his grandfather’s time, he also liked the structures. He painted old kitchens and old barns, old farmhouses, old gates, old well-sweeps, old meeting houses, old boats, and old wharves. Shapleigh painted dams, mill ponds, and old mills throughout New England, including the interior Old Mill in Scituate, Massachusetts, 1886 (p. 49, #28). Contemporary observers also noticed his penchant for the charming and picturesque. “Mr. and Mrs. F. H. Shapleigh have arrived at the Crawford House,” the Echo reported, “and Mr. Shapleigh is now settled in his well known studio for the summer. He passed the month of June in Jackson, and shows, as a result of his work there, charming pictures of old apple orchards in bloom, picturesque farm houses, and quiet country roads, all of which will be sure of a quick sale.” 23

5 Great Room Shapleigh Home, “Maple

Knoll”, Jackson, New Hampshire, c. 1900.

Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

Shapleigh had a love and appreciation for the furnishings of an earlier time. Not only was he a collector of antiques, but he also lived with them, used them in his everyday life, and in his paintings. Beyond that, he painted old buildings and the artifacts of his grandfather’s time with a charming bit of color to enhance visual appeal. 24 The bit of color was, in many paintings, a yellow straw hat hanging on a peg, a man wearing a white shirt with a blue vest, a blue sky with white cumulus clouds, green foliage, and purple mountains. So often are these tropes used that they are considered Shapleigh’s trademarks.

BARNS: Connecting With Rural Roots BARNS Working the land in New England relied upon tools, wagons, plus animal and people power. It required a broad spectrum of skills from gardening to house construction and animal husbandry. The farmer needed to be a jack-of-all-trades skillfully using farm implements, carpentry tools, ice saws, hewing and felling axes, horse-drawn sleighs, gas lanterns, wash tubs, sharpening stones, and yokes for oxen. Raising live-

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5 Shapleigh Studio, “Maple Knoll”, Jackson, New Hampshire, c. 1900. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

stock was important on many levels: chickens and pigs were good for food or barter; horses and oxen were necessary work animals; goats, sheep, and cattle provided milk and cheese, leather, wool, meat, and an excellent fertilizer for crops. The focus of all these activities was the barn.

New England barns have both commonplace and personalizing characteristics. The New England connected farms were the configuration of necessity: numerous buildings, built at different times and with different materials creating irregular roof lines and varying sizes, connected into one continuous structure. As historian Thomas C. Hubka has demonstrated, many New England farmers adopted the connected farm building arrangement because it was well suited to the multipurpose agricultural production employed by most of the rural population. 25 To a lesser degree, these connected farms also evolved from the desire to carry out farm duties while remaining sheltered from New England’s harsh weather. Internal doors allowed farmers to avoid going out into deep snow and inclement conditions. The classic New England connected farm complex included the farmhouse attached to smaller storage buildings, ells, sheds, privy, workshop, milk house, followed by a carriage or wagon house in an inter-connected and somewhat disjointed manner. The last building in the progression was usually the barn. Barn doors were constructed high and wide enough through which to drive a wagon loaded with hay. An important commodity, hay was cut in June, July, and August and stored year-round.

Connected farms are well represented in Shapleigh’s paintings, most notably Perkins Farm, Jackson, New Hampshire, 1870 (p.27, #10). In a companion painting, Moat Mountain from Perkins Barn, 1881 (p.26, #9), a door leading to a harness room is visible on the right. Comparing the extant structures and landscape in these two Perkins Farm paintings reinforces Shapleigh’s attention to detail. The building and landscape today look remarkably similar to the one-hundredthirty-year-old painting. Shapleigh was very familiar with nineteenth-century New England barn construction. There are peculiar aspects to Shapleigh’s barn interiors that personalized the barn.

For example, there are barn paintings, such as Old Barn in Jackson, New Hampshire, 1887 (p.19, #2), Old Barn in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1889 (p.32, #15), and Old Barn in Farmington, Maine, 1886 (p.39, #21) with a row of glass windows above the barn doors to let sunlight in when the doors are closed; you can see such “transom light” windows today in old New England barns.

Some barn paintings, such as View from Old Barn in Bridgton, Maine, 1883 (p.38, #20) and Mount Washington and Walker’s Pond from Old Barn in Conway, New Hampshire, 1885 (p.35, #18) have two or more small round holes above the doors (to allow barn swallows to fly in and out). The inclusion of stairs to an overhead loft is visible in Old Barn In Jackson, New Hampshire, 1892 (p.21, #4). This painting is particularly interesting because of the manure stain on the exterior wall which can be seen through the barn door. All winter the farmer shoveled manure from inside the building through the window into the barn yard, where it built up against the exterior wall. In the spring the manure was spread onto the fields, leaving a stain on the wall that Shapleigh thought important to document. An animal feed station can be seen on the left in Old Barn in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1884 (p.30, #13). Some barn scenes may have one (or

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both) of the doors closed, like Old Barn in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1883 (p.29, #12) and Old Barn in Jackson, New Hampshire, 1884 (p.20, #3) with two farmers shucking corn, which are comparable to Eastman Johnson’s Corn Husking, 1860 . These paintings become much more about the barn’s interior than the view through the door. The unique features included in his barn scenes, compared to existing barns, suggest that the barns he painted were real barns.

Shapleigh was able to control palette, developing a painting that directed the viewer’s attention, composed the picture, and lighted the scene. Shapleigh’s use of the barn doorway repoussoir or “frame-within-a-frame” helped direct the viewer’s eye back to the exterior composition, adding depth to the paintings. Shapleigh’s barn paintings, faithfully delineated in artistic fashion, have many common characteristics. They are usually views looking from the interior of the barn through the open doors framing the landscape beyond, with sunlight shining into the barn illuminating the interior floor, hay hanging from an overhead loft, a reed basket, and often some poultry (chickens, geese, and turkeys are common components in many of Shapleigh’s paintings) in the yard. Occasionally a man with a white shirt, blue vest, and yellow straw hat will be present, like in Old Barn in Jackson, New Hampshire, 1879 (p.23, #6). In the middle distances through the door may be a well sweep, farm buildings, rail fence, rock wall, trees, or a road—all standard objects found in and around the farmyard. The subjects in the far distance—often a distinctive mountain like Mount Washington in Old Barn in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1884 (p.30, #13), Mount Chocorua Old Barn in Conway, New Hampshire, 1883 (p.36, #19), Carter Notch in Old Barn in Jackson, New Hampshire, 1879 (p.22, #5), or Moat Mountain in Old Barn in Jackson, New Hampshire, 1879 (p.18, #1); or seascape; or country landscape—are authentically represented based upon the location of the barn. 26 Of additional interest is that Shapleigh used the concept of being inside a barn looking out as a viewpoint in The Slave Market, St. Augustine, Florida, 1892 (private collection). This painting is very specific to the interior of the actual Slave Market building still standing in St. Augustine’s Public Market Place. While the view seen “out the door” has changed since Shapleigh’s time, comparing the painting with contemporary photographs, the view depicted is very accurate: Shapleigh was faithful to the setting. However, St. Augustine presents us with other interesting clues to Shapleigh’s honesty to subject. Many of the Florida and New England buildings Shapleigh painted are still standing. Comparing the structures in his paintings with the actual buildings demonstrates how faithful he was to the subject.

Old barns are still fascinating. There is an appeal we find captivating. Perhaps it is the connection with our agricultural roots, or the structures themselves, or specialized equipment and animals we find there. Whatever tangible, or perhaps intangible, attractions barns present, Shapleigh was able to harness that appeal for his nineteenth-century clients. That appeal still resides with us today.

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KITCHENS: Suggestions of Rural Home Life The kitchen is the focal point of most homes. It is where meals are prepared and consumed. It is where family and friends gather to visit and talk. It is often the room by which the house is entered or exited. Kitchens project comfort, warmth, peace, and serenity. We spend more awake time in the kitchen than any other room. This may have been even more true one-hundred-plus years ago. As arguably the most personal of the home’s public spaces, it is not surprising that Shapleigh painted a large number of kitchens and that they were popular with his clients.

Country kitchens were conveniently located behind the parlor, keeping room, or dining room to allow the spread of radiant heat from the centrally located chimney. In his kitchens Shapleigh placed all manner of household implements including a variety of silverware, pewter, brass, wooden, iron, copper, and tin utensils. Small hand-held tools were among the many common labor-saving devices found there. Glassware, earthenware jars, and pottery used for food preparation, eating, and storage were depicted. Food was often cooked over an open fire within a brick fireplace, the temperature controlled by hanging the cook pot from the crane or placing it on a trivet. A baking oven might be built into the side of the fireplace opening, often with a removable wooden door. The hens, geese, and dairy cows kept by the housewives to supply fresh eggs, cream, milk and churned butter were also depicted through an open door that placed a landscape in the kitchen.

In the 1880s Shapleigh titled his kitchens Old Kitchen . His country kitchens were of eighteenthor early nineteenth-century construction and furnishings. The kitchens have both similarity and uniqueness in fireplace construction which we would expect. Virtually all of the fireplaces have a large opening for cooking, floor level hearth, and are made of brick. However, each fireplace is different: some have a bake oven, some do not; some have a wooden mantel, some do not; some show stepped-up brick work above the fireplace like Old Kitchen, Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1891 (p.47, #26), and some do not.

Everyday familiarity is true also for the kitchen furnishings: andirons, cast iron cooking kettles, bellows, tongs and cooking cranes. Furniture, implements, and tools associated with the fireplace are authentically represented in the paintings so we can easily identify them. There is frequently a cat sitting on the hearth and chickens seen through the door. The view through the window or door seems to genuinely represent the landscape one would expect. Shapleigh’s painting Old Kitchen, Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1882 (p.46, #25) shows an exterior door seen through an interior door; the exterior door has a transom window above it, a common construction feature still visible in old homes.

In Old Kitchen in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1886 (p.43, #22) there is a plethora of early American furnishings: a tip-table, slant top desk, comb-back Windsor chair, reed basket, ladder back side chair, grandfather clock, broom, yellow hat hanging on the wall, fireplace with andirons,

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bake oven, and a cat on the hearth. On the mantel are an earthenware pitcher, Paul Revere lantern, pewter plates, and two candlesticks. In the open window is a potted flower and through the open door can be seen a well sweep, sunflowers, and chickens.

Four of Shapleigh’s kitchen paintings are almost certainly from the same home. When we compare Old Kitchen in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1882 (p.46, #25), Old Kitchen in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1883 (p.44, #23), Old Kitchen in Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1883 (p.45, #24), and Old Kitchen Bartlett, New Hampshire, 1885 (p.48, #27) there are remarkable similarities: the fireplace hearth is two-thirds field stone and one-third brick; similar fireplace brick work; vertical wood paneling; the same andirons, peel and tongs; and wooden mantel above the fireplace with similar candles. Three of the paintings have an open door looking through an exterior door with transom windows.

Three have a ladder back chair, two have a comb back Windsor chair, and a different two have a yellow hat hanging on the wall. Three have a cat sitting on the hearth. A study of Shapleigh’s full artistic repertoire reveals his tendency to paint multiple renditions of the same subject. He did this with his landscapes and some interiors.

Shapleigh also painted old kitchen scenes while in St. Augustine. The Tatler reported, “Mr. Shapleigh’s studio is replete with studies of the picturesque streets of this city; the quaint old houses are faithfully delineated in artistic fashion. One just completed, of the harbor with a schooner at the pier, is a charming bit of color. Another picture of his that attracts a great deal of attention is an interior of an old house on St. George Street with a large fireplace, bare floors and walls, the occupant a colored woman, that is so suggestive of the home life here.” 27 Kitchens are central to homes. The kitchen was the center of all household activities: women cooked there,

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5 Shapleigh Studio, Hotel Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida, c 1890. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

5 Shapleigh Studio, Hotel Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida, c 1890. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

families kept warm on cold winter days, and household jobs were completed there. A wide-open hearth, level with the floor for cooking convenience, was the focus of the kitchen. These qualities appealed to Shapleigh.

He painted rural kitchens, often with the door open, as if the housewife has just stepped out for a moment.

They look lived in, cat on the hearth, fire blazing, and dinner in the pot. These features were captured in his paintings and continue to appeal to us today.

CONCLUSION: The Native New Englander

5 Shapleigh Studio, Hotel Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida, c 1890. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

5 Shapleigh Studio, Hotel Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida, c 1890. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

In a seeming contradiction, Shapleigh loved farms, barns, and country life, but also the grand resort hotels of the rich and famous. Shapleigh had an apparent dual nature: love of the common lifestyle of rural New England, yet at home in the resort hotel culture. In addition to being sublimely in tune with nature, Shapleigh had command of the components of country life and comfort with the celebrities of his day. Shapleigh had two favorite topics which could intersect: one appealed to the tastes of the tourist trade at the grand resort hotel and the other, more personal and human, to the country subject of the average man. His interiors allow us to travel back to a time that has nearly vanished. Shapleigh was clearly captivated by these peaceful country settings and reflected this in his paintings.

Both Shapleigh’s barn and kitchen interiors possess the unusual combination of individuality and ordinariness.

Shapleigh organized his paintings to take advantage of a point of a view. Large open barn doors combined his interests in old barns and landscape. On a smaller scale this is also true with his kitchen scenes. There is often a door or window open to allow the exterior landscape to be seen. Shapleigh’s paintings are realistic without bending to the ideal; they are truthful renditions of nature and man’s settlements. Shapleigh knew how to paint sunlight. Brightness was achieved by the

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perspective he chose—by allowing natural light and color through the barn or kitchen door. Shapleigh had a great fondness for country life; he was certainly not timid in his representation of country life in his work.

These paintings do more than just show what once was, they create a time capsule that helps us capture a time gone by. Shapleigh’s art carries with it the genes of civilization.

The modern viewer will find Shapleigh painted real places and was true to his subject. This is reflected in virtually all of his paintings. Writing about Shapleigh’s Florida paintings, one St. Augustine newspaper underscored this: “[Shapleigh] has been so true to nature in the drawing that the stranger visiting the island for the first time would readily recognize it.” 28 Of course, he brought an artistic eye also, incorporating his trademark features into many of his paintings: a man wearing a white shirt with blue vest, a yellow straw hat, reed basket, oak barrel, or blue sky with white clouds.

The evidence indicates that Shapleigh painted real barns and real landscapes. He found little need to alter reality; for the most part he was a literal artist true to nature. He used palette, technique, and sub- 5 “Frank H. Shapleigh Studio Promotion”, c. 1900. Courtesy of Robert Charles. This ject to make the viewer feel that he actually knows publicity poster, personally hand-lettered by the farmyard. He did not idealize or romanticize what Shapleigh, was designed to direct patrons to he painted; he carefully and accurately painted fields, his studio and reportedly was displayed in walls, farmhouses, and barns. Shapleigh liked to paint Wentworth Hall’s public rooms. what he personally saw and knew. He used no overwhelming imaginative tool, utensil, or setting to reflect nineteenth-century rural life. It was not necessary. He showed what was experienced by the vast number of Americans. And today these same paintings clearly influence our twenty-first-century view of that time.

In June 1901, fifty-nine year old Shapleigh, near the end of his artistic career, painted his last known interior, a watercolor, Window in room / 8 Peacock Inn / Rowsley — June 1901 (p. 50, #29) showing the interior of cross-leaded casement windows, Federal-style Hepplewhite armchair with distinctive shield back motif, wainscot-carved blanket chest, and vases of flowers. 29 It seems fitting that in one of his last paintings he would return to favorite subjects: an interior

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displaying antique furnishing. Shapleigh was a most popular, pleasant, and beloved artist, friend, and Jackson resident. Photographs of the interior and exterior of Shapleigh’s Maple Knoll studio were mounted on a sign, made by Shapleigh himself, called The Studio of Frank. H. Shapleigh (p.13). The sign was placed in Wentworth Hall to provide directions to Shapleigh’s studio, attached to his home (today a private residence), located on Black Mountain Road.

An undated Jackson obituary recorded, “Mr. Shapleigh who died on May 30, had been coming to Jackson in company of Mrs. Shapleigh for many years, and their attractive studio-cottage was a rendezvous for the artists, musicians and writers who made Jackson their summer home.” The Boston Transcript published, “[Shapleigh’s] studio in Jackson has been a favorite resort for visitors, who could always find there landscapes of a slightly old-fashioned style, dealing with the hills and valleys which have engaged the attention of so many American landscapists.” 30 By the turn of the twentieth century America was becoming cosmopolitan. The Industrial Revolution was drawing workers from farms to the cities. Americans were losing their agricultural roots. It is not by chance that living museums like Old Sturbridge Village, Old St. Augustine Village, and Strawbery Banke Museum have an alluring appeal today. We cherish the memory of our grandparents and great-grandparents and their pragmatic, simple, and practical lives. The continued interest in Shapleigh’s interiors draws directly from our needs and desires to recapture an America that has vanished.

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BIOGRAPHY Charles O. Vogel authored “The Roads to Jackson: Artists, Hostelries, and a Glimpse of White Mountain Scenery” for the Jackson Historical Society’s 2012 publication On the Road to Jackson: A Journey Through the White Mountains of New Hampshire . Charles acknowledges and thanks Rob Bermudes, Gloria Vogel, and Randy Bennett for their contributions in editing this essay. Charles and his wife Gloria live in Vero Beach, Florida.

ENDNOTES 1. The concept that Shapleigh painted real, factual places is underscored by the titles of some recent publications.

See William G. Hennessy and Frederic A. Sharf, “Frank Henry Shapleigh, Painter of Places,” The Magazine Antiques, (November 1961), pages 450-452 and Full of Facts and Sentiment: The Art of Frank H. Shapleigh (Concord: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1982). Among the Clouds wrote on August 5, 1882, “[Shapleigh’s] Old Red School-house is a charming picture. It is full of facts and sentiment, and every native of New England who spent his early days in the country, will look at it with pleasure.”

2. For example, William Sidney Mount (1807–1868) was a genre master featuring the interior and exterior of barn activities from his native Long Island. George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879), well known for his flatboat paintings and views along the Mississippi River, painted Family Life on the Frontier, c. 1845 (New Orleans Museum of Art), a wonderful painting silhouetting and illuminating a frontier family by candlelight enjoying the comforts of a frontier home. Enoch Wood Perry’s (1831–1915) Saturday Afternoon, 1831 (private collection) and Women Weaving (private collection) are among several paintings he produced exhibiting an abundance of household kitchen implements. Henry Ossawa Tanner’s (1859–1937)

Spinning by Firelight–The Boyhood of George Washington Gray, 1894 (Yale University Art Gallery) shows a young boy playing by the fireplace while his mother is actively working on a spinning wheel. Winslow Homer’s (1836–1910) The Country School, 1871 (St. Louis Art Museum) is a masterpiece of late nineteenth century school simplicity. Theodore Robinson’s (1852–1896) The Forge, 1886, also known as An Apprentice Blacksmith, shows a boy before a blacksmith hearth with all of the trappings expected.

3. In 1867 twenty-five-year-old Shapleigh sailed with J. Appleton Brown (1844-1902) on S.S. Paronia from East Boston to London. Shapleigh was a young art student in the Paris atelier of Emile Lambinet (1815–1877). We know from his 1867 European sketchbook that he visited the Louvre with some regularity and would have been familiar with European genre paintings.

4. Shapleigh produced thirteen Civil War pen and ink illustrations showing camp life and combat for The Campaign of the Forty-Fifth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia “The Cadet Regiment,” Boston, printed by James S. Adams, 1882, and published by the “Company A Associates” of the Forty-Fifth Regiment. Shapleigh was a member of Company A. 5. In 1874, the same year he was elected a member of the Boston Art Club, Shapleigh painted his earliest known interior, Old Barn at West Lebanon, Maine. Shapleigh exhibited at the Boston Art Club from 1874 until 1884, including Old Barn at North Conway in 1880.

6. “Exhibition of Mr. Shapleigh’s Watercolors,” The Boston Evening Transcript, November 18, 1897.

7. Charles Merrill, son of Cordeanio Harley Merrill (1840–1908), the Crawford House’s manager from 1872 to 1903, wrote that Shapleigh was “much liked.” See, The White Mountain Echo and Tourist’s Register, August 7, 1886, page 14. The Echo (1878–1927), as it was popularly known, reported on hotel functions, guest arrivals and

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departures, local history, scenic attractions, and town activities.

8. Echo, July 6, 1889, page 12.

9. Memorandum by Charles Merrill, typescript, c. 1970 (photocopy in Shapleigh exhibition files, 1982, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH). Also, Kenneth Beal oral history, recorded by Mrs. George Beal, 1965, “Cane in hand, [Shapleigh] took [his nephew Kenneth Beal] for long walks [in Cohasset], sometimes as far as Scituate. As they walked, Uncle Frank looked around for subjects for his canvas, occasionally rapping on the door of a house which interested him.” (George Beal family papers) 10. Interview with Charles and Gloria Vogel, July, 1973, in Mrs. March’s Jackson home. On November 9, 1893 Shapleigh bought the land for his home from Mrs. March’s father, William W. Trickey and his brother George P. Trickey, co-owners of the Jackson Falls House.

As a young woman Mrs. March was Shapleigh’s neighbor. She remembered that Shapleigh had two cats, Ping and Pong, he liked to play a game called Clock-Golf, and often visited with local friends. Mrs. March identified the photograph of F. H. Shapleigh, given by Mrs. Shapleigh in 1906 to the Jackson Free Public Library, which is now in the Jackson Historical Society.

11. Portsmouth [NH] Journal, November 20, 1875, transcribed by D-B Garvin; copy at the New Hampshire Historical Society.

12. Eastman Johnson was born in Lovell, Maine, and became a co-founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1860 Johnson painted Corn Husking (Everson Museum of Art), a work that looks into a New England barn in Fryeburg, Maine, and documents a family engaged in the time-honored tradition of preparing the corn harvest for storage. In 2008 Samuel and Sheila Robbins donated to the Lovell [Maine] Historical Society a set of barn doors, the backdrop for Eastman Johnson’s Corn Husk-

ing, originally purchased by Robert Goldberg from the Day house on Fish Street in Fryeburg. In 1861 the New York City lithograph firm Currier and Ives published a large folio lithograph entitled Husking signed “E. Johnson 1860” within the lithograph. Currier and Ives produced other barn subjects including Holidays In The Country, Troublesome Flies, 1868, and The Old Barn Floor, 1868.

George Henry Durrie’s (1820–1863) Settling a Bill, 1851 (private collection) is a somewhat similar subject including the tally marks on the open barn door. Alvan Fisher’s (1792–1863) Corn Husking Frolic, c. 1828 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is set in the interior of a rural barn.

13. University Art Galleries, University of New Hampshire, The White Mountains: Place and Perceptions, Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980, illustration #4, page 13.

14. Benjamin Champney, Sixty Years’ Memories of Art and Artists (Woburn, Massachusetts: Wallace & Andrews, 1900), page 129.

15. See Full of Facts and Sentiment.

16. The Echo reported on July 26, 1884, “The door knocker on his Crawford House studio referred to as an ‘old-fashioned brass knocker.’” Lizzie W. Champney, “Summer Haunts of American Artists,” The Century Magazine, Volume XXX, No. 6, (October 1885), page 855 reported: “At Crawford’s Notch, Mr. Frank H. Shapleigh of Boston has, near the hotel, a studio, which he has made so picturesque and attractive that it is one of the sights of the place.”

17. The Tatler, February 6, 1892. The Tatler and the St. Augustine News were local St. Augustine newspapers that covered community and hotel events.

18. St. Augustine News, February 15, 1891.

19. The Tatler, March 19, 1892; St. Augustine News, March 22, 1891, “Mr. Shapleigh has some beautiful work on exhibition this season, but nothing more pleasing than

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his picture of the sea wall and bit of bay and his New England interiors, although he has been very busy in his Florida woodland effects.”

20. Champney, Sixty Years’ Memories, page 169. In a letter to Champney, dated “Paris, November 30, 1894” Shapleigh wrote, “I took lunch at the ‘Black Bull’ and have never ceased to regret that I did not buy an old arm chair which I saw in that hostelry.” The Black Bull Inn, in northeast England, is a seventeenth-century inn on the main street of Wooler. (transcript in the author’s Shapleigh file) 21. In an unpublished letter dated July 29, 1900, Miss Grace Bickford wrote from Wentworth Hall to her family of her visit to Shapleigh’s Jackson home and studio.

This letter was in a collection of Grace Bickford’s letters sold to an unidentified purchaser in an internet auction on April 3, 2011.

22. Unpublished journal entry by Kenneth Wright, Mrs. Shapleigh’s nephew, describing Shapleigh’s Jackson home and studio, July 16, 1903, (copy in the author’s files) 23. Echo, July 9, 1892, page 6.

25. Thomas C. Hubka (born 1946) is an American architectural historian who is best known for his work on connected farm buildings in New England. His book Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn was the 1985 winner of the “Abbott Lowell Cummings Award” of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

26. There are barn tools or equipment such as ladders, barrels, feed buckets, rakes, pitchforks, or yokes. There is sometimes a horse or two or even a farm worker sitting in the doorway. Of course, virtually all of these one would expect to find in a typical nineteenth-century barn.

27. The Tatler, March 5, 1892.

28. The Tatler, February 6, 1892.

29. The Peacock Inn at Rowsley in the Derbyshire Dales, Peak District in the heart of England, dates from 1652 and is famed for its superior fly fishing. Illustrated in The Magazine antiques, July 1969, page 114. Exhibited: Full of Facts and Sentiment, number 59, page 62.

30. Boston Evening Transcript, “Death of Frank H. Shapleigh,” June 2, 1906.

24. Shapleigh’s painting affection for an earlier time was not limited to old kitchens and barns. For example, in New Hampshire he painted Old Road Near Kearsarge Village, N.H.; Old Gate, Jackson N.H.; Old Farmhouse, Thorn Hill, Jackson, N.H., 1874; Old Mill, Jackson, N. H., 1877; Moat Mountain and Old Farmhouse, Jackson, N.H., 1879; and Old Farmhouse and Cinnamon Roses, Jackson, N.H., 1887. Other New England paintings included Old Boats at Cohasset, 1882; Old Wharves at Cohasset; Old Meeting House, Wells, Maine; and Old Mill, Hiram, Maine, 1890. In Florida he painted Ruin of Old Spanish Fort at Matanzas, 1887; The Old Sanchez House, St. Augustine, Florida, 1889; and Old House in Charlotte Street, St. Augustine Florida, 1889. On a painting trip to Canada he painted Old Wharf at Point Levis, Quebec, 1890. Late in his career Shapleigh painted a series of old Spanish missions in southern California.

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1. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1879 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Robert S. Chase View: North Moat Mountain

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2. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1887 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1887” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by George H. Fernald

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3. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1884 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F.H. Shapleigh 1884” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh” Lent by Warren and Leslie Schomaker View: appears to be North Moat Mountain

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4. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1892 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated: “F. H. Shapleigh 1892” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. /by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent from the Collection of Charles and Gloria Vogel Stain on barn is from manure piled against it for a long period. Compare with #8.

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5. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1879 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Robert S. Chase View: Carter Notch with Wildcat Mountain on the left and Carter Dome on the right. The road is the present Carter Notch Road. The cleared area is known as Prospect Farm, where numerous cellar holes of early farmhouses still exist.

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6. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1879 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn Jackson NH” Lent by Dick and Sandy Hamilton View: Mt. Washington, distant peak on the right could be Mt. Adams

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7. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1886 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1886” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn and Mote Mountain from / Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by David R. Carchedi and Karen J. Janucci Family Trust North Moat, Middle Moat, and South Moat Mountains, right to left

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8. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1889 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1889” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh” Lent by Tom and Cathy McAndrews Stain on barn is from manure piled against it for a long period. Compare with #4.

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9: Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1881 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F.H. Shapleigh 1881” Inscription en verso: “Mote Mt. from Perkins Barn Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh” Lent by Andy and Linda McLane Perkins barn on Black Mountain Road, now part of the Christmas Farm Inn. The red building still stands as part of the inn.

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10. Perkins Farm in Jackson NH, 1870 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh” Painting has been re-lined. Original inscription en verso: “Farm House in Jackson NH” Lent by Andy and Linda McLane On Black Mountain Road, now part of the Christmas Farm Inn. The red building still stands as part of the inn. Compare with #9.

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11. Old Barn Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Unsigned and no inscription en verso Lent by Robert Conrad Probably located in Jackson, possibly Thorn Hill Road

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12. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1883 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F.H. Shapleigh 1883” Inscription en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” From the Jackson Historical Society collection On Rte 302 at the western end of Bartlett. The house, built in 1796, is the Office for Mountain Home Cabins and the barn is the office and warming hut for Bear Notch Ski Touring Center, both owned by the Garland family.

The ridgeline is part of Mt Langdon.

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13.Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1884 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F.H. Shapleigh 1884” Inscription en verso: “Mt. Washington from / Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” From the Jackson Historical Society collection Wide view of Mt Washington with Saco River

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14. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1888 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1888” Inscribed en verso:”Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent Anonymously

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15. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1889 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1889” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent Anonymously Wide view of Mt Washington with Saco River. Compare with #16.

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16. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1889 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1889” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Allen and Georgia Vogel Wide view of Mt Washington with Saco River. Compare with #15.

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17. Old Barn in Conway NH, 1879 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and date lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879” Inscribed en verso: “Mote Mt from Old Barn, Conway NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Andy and Linda McLane Moat Mountain from the east shore of Conway Lake.

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18. Old Barn in Conway NH, 1885 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1885” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington and Walker’s Pond from Old Barn in Conway N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Image lent by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; purchased through the Julia L. Whittier Fund View of Mt Washington looking across Walker’s Pond in Conway. The peak on the left is North Moat.

IMAGE ONLY, PAINTING NOT IN EXHIBITION

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19. Old Barn in Conway NH, 1883 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Chocorua from Old Barn in Conway N.H. / by / F .H. Shapleigh” Lent Anonymously Mt Chocorua. The dirt road is Route 16 heading south from Conway.

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19B. Old Barn in Eaton NH, 1878 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1878” No inscription en verso Lent by Bill and Linda Morse Old Jenkins place in Eaton on Horse Lake Road. House is no longer standing

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20. Old Barn in Bridgton, Maine, 1883 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn in / Bridgton Maine /by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Andy and Linda McLane View of Mt Washington across Highland Lake.

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21. Old Barn in Farmington Maine, 1886 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1886” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Farmington Maine / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Jeannette Blake The Sandy River and the mountain in the far distance is Mt. Blue.

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Bob Cottrell

Changing Styles: Old and New Barns A variety of barn styles and building arrangements can be seen in the farms depicted in Shapleigh‘s and other artist’s works. During his lifetime, Shapleigh would have seen a pattern of changes in barn design that occurred at different places at different times.

However, barn history follows a pretty well-defined pattern in New Hampshire.

When Shapleigh was born in 1842, most barns in northern New England were so-called “English” barns based on ancient medieval English traditions, architectural patterns, and building techniques.

To understand changes in barn design and construction, it is helpful to review some of the basic terminology for the main parts of the barn as illustrated in Sketch 1.

Like a house, the top horizontal line of the roof of the barn is called the “ridge.” The lower horizontal edge of the roof is called the “eaves.” The triangular part of the short end of the barn under the roof is called the “gable” and that wall is called the “gable end.”

An English style barn can be identified from the outside by a pair of large hinged doors under the eaves on the long side walls of the barn. This allowed hay wagons to drive through and unload hay with pitchforks up into the lofts above the tie up and the mow.

From the inside, the floor plan of the English style barn was divided into three sections or bays divided by frames of timber or “bents.” These can be seen in the sketch as little black squares. Imagine these are the base of the posts that support the walls and roof as illustrated in Sketch 2.

There usually was no cellar in the older barns. Instead most of these barns were built on a foundation of simple field stones that can make the outline of old barns hard to find in the woods.

The wooden floor in the center was known as a “threshing” floor using the short distance of the drive through the doors in the side walls as a breeze way to catch the wind as they would thresh and

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winnow grains such as wheat, rye, barley and oats using simple hand tools such as a flail and winnowing baskets.

The bay on one side of the central aisle was usually a “tie up” used to stable livestock and the other side a storage area used to store grain, hay and farm equipment.

Shapleigh’s paintings show us two common options for tying up livestock, head in or head out.

One way is easier to feed from the central aisle and is identified when you see the horse’s head.

The other option, identified when you see the back end of the horse, makes it easier to clean up from the central aisle.

Typically English style barns were about thirty by forty feet in size. These early barns were constructed by traditional hand-hewn timber framing techniques. In the paintings by Shapleigh, the roughly shaped heavy posts and beams of the barn can be seen framing the door opening.

However, the only thing that is constant is change. By the time of Shapleigh’s birth in 1842, early experiments with a new style of barn had already begun. Over the next fifty years the old “English” barn style was replaced with a new “Yankee” or “New England” style barn.

The main difference as seen from the outside was the location of the doors, now on the short gable ends rather than the long side with the eaves as illustrated in Sketch 3.

In some cases, older style barns were reconfigured and changed to the new style. The old doors were simply nailed shut and new doors cut at the short gable end. This also required cutting away some of the posts as well as leaving tell tale empty mortise holes in the beams which can still be seen today in existing barns from that period.

From the inside, the new style barns can be identified by the use of small dimensional timbers, more regular, standardized measurements (known as the square rule), and increased use of sawn rather than hewn timber.

Using standardized lumber and more modern construction techniques led to tighter barn buildings. The light showing between the cracks in many of Shapleigh’s barn paintings is indicative of the older style barn building.

These new barns also had brighter interiors due to the increased use of windows and cupolas or ventilators and did not have the dark, mysterious appearance seen in Shapleigh’s work. More often, newer barns were white washed inside reflecting a trend towards greater hygiene and sanitation especially in dairy barns.

Frequently the doors in the new barns slide on wheels rather than open out on the large hinges of the past. See Stapleton Kearns’ painting of the Trickey Barn in Jackson for an example of one of these sliding doors set in the gable end.

The reasons for these major changes in barn design, construction and use are complex and have

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to do with both economic and stylistic changes including labor shortages, population migrations, mortality and crippling from the Civil War, competition from western farmers, technological and manufacturing innovations, and social networking groups such as the Grange.

The paintings in the exhibition “Shapleigh from the Inside Out” date from 1879 to 1892. Even in this relatively short period of thirteen years, some of the progression of change noted here can be seen.

2013 07-16 Cottrell author notes and acknowledgements

About the author

Acknowledgements

Bob Cottrell is the Curator of the Nella Braddy Henney History Room at the Conway Public Library. He has a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture in Delaware. He has worked in the history/museum field since 1980.

I am indebted to many authors for the history of barns and barn construction, especially James and Donna-Belle Garvin, Francis Gilman, Henry Glassie, John Porter, and Thomas Durant Visser.

He has worked at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., The Crowley Museum and Nature Center in Sarasota, Florida, the St. Petersburg Historical Museum also in Florida, the Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana and at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. In 1996 he became the founding Director of the Remick Country Doctor Museum and Farm in Tamworth, New Hampshire.

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22. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1886 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1886” Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent from the Collection of Charles and Gloria Vogel Note clock is set at five minutes to four, as is the clock in #23.

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23. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1883 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883” Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett N.H. / by / F .H. Shapleigh” Lent by Warren and Leslie Schomaker Note clock is set at five minutes to four, as is the clock in #22.

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24. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1883 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” From the Jackson Historical Society collection We believe this kitchen is in Dottie Russell’s house on the Bartlett end of Thorn Hill Road. Compare with #25 and #27.

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25. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1882 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1882” Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent Anonymously We believe this kitchen is in Dottie Russell’s house on the Bartlett end of Thorn Hill Road. Compare with #23 and #27.

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26. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1891 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1891” Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh Image lent by Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; gift of Robert A. and Dorothy H. Goldberg The fireplace depicted is not one used for cooking.

IMAGE ONLY, PAINTING NOT IN EXHIBITION

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27. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1885 Oil on Canvas, 10” x 16” Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1885” Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh” Lent by Allen and Georgia Vogel We believe this kitchen is in Dottie Russell’s house on the Bartlett end of Thorn Hill Road. Compare with #24 and #25

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28. Old Mill in Scituate Mass, 1886 Oil on Canvas, 16” x 10” Signed and dated lower left: “F.H. Shapleigh 1886” Inscribed en verso: “Interior Old Mill in Scituate Mass” Lent by George H. Fernald Mrs. Shapleigh was from Scituate.

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29. Window in Room 8, Peacock Inn, Rowsley, 1901 Watercolor on paper, 10” x 9” Not signed, but titled in artist’s hand Window in Room 8, Peacock Inn, Rowsley June 1901 Lent from the Collection of Charles and Gloria Vogel On his last trip to England, Shapleigh’s enthusiasm for antiquities remained strong. This watercolor view, focusing on one corner of a particular lodging room, with its casement window, wainscot chest and Hepplewhite armchair, is Shapleigh’s last known artistic effort. No exterior views survive from this final trip to England, suggesting that Shapleigh’s customary sketching excursions may have been curtailed by the poor state of his health at that time.

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31. The Trickey Barn in Jackson NH, 2008 Oil on canvas 16” x 24” Signed and dated lower left: “Stapleton Kearns 2008” Lent by Emily and Bill Hall The 137 year-old Trickey Barn was part of the Jackson Falls House. After the hotel was demolished in 1970, the land where it stood came under the ownership of the Jackson Grammar School. The 2008 expansion of the school required that the Barn be removed. The Jackson Historical Society paid to have the Barn taken down, preserving the timbers so that it could be re-erected two years later as the new Jackson Public Library. While the Barn could not retain its historic location, we were inspired by Shapleigh to preserve as much history as possible – hence the scene through the open door was recorded in this painting by Stapleton Kearns.

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32. The Trickey Barn sited at the Jackson Library, 2013 Oil on canvas, 10” x 16” Signed lower left “Koeppel” Inscribed en verso: “View from the Tricky Barn, Jackson, N.H. / Erik Koeppel 2013” Jackson Historical Society collection After the Trickey Barn was dismantled by the Historical Society, it was re-erected as the Jackson Public Library. This painting, in the style of Frank Shapleigh, shows what the view would be if the Trickey barn had been moved intact to the current library site.

In the view is the Jackson Church, Carter Notch, Carter Dome and Wildcat Mountain.

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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST pg. 18 1. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1879 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. View: North Moat Mountain. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Robert S. Chase. pg. 19 2. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1887 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1887”.

Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by George H. Fernald. pg. 20 3. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1884 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. View: appears to be North Moat Mountain. Signed and dated lower left: “F.H. Shapleigh 1884”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh”. Lent

by Warren and Leslie Schomaker. pg. 21 4. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1892 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Stain on barn is from manure piled against it for a long period. Compare with #8. Signed and dated: “F. H. Shapleigh 1892”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent from the Collection of Charles and Gloria Vogel. pg. 22 5. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1879 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. View: Carter Notch with Wildcat Mountain on the left and Carter Dome on the right. The road is the present Carter Notch Road. The cleared area is known as Prospect Farm, where numerous cellar holes of early farmhouses still exist. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879”. Verso: “Old barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh” Lent by John and Alice Pepper. pg. 23 6. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1879 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. View: Mt. Washington, distant peak on the right could be Mt. Adams. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879”. Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn Jackson NH”. Lent by Dick and Sandy Hamilton. pg. 24 7. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1886 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. North Moat, Middle Moat, and South Moat Mountains, right to left. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1886”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn and Mote Mountain from / Jackson N.H. / by / Shapleigh”. Lent by David R. Carchedi and Karen J. Janucci Family Trust. pg. 25 8. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1889 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Stain on barn is from manure piled against it for a long period. Compare with #4. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1889”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Tom and Cathy McAndrews. pg. 26 9. Old Barn in Jackson NH, 1881 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Perkins barn on Black Mountain Road, now part of the Christmas Farm Inn. The red building still stands as part of the inn. Signed and dated lower right: “F.H. Shapleigh 1881”. Inscribed en verso: “Mote Mt. from Perkins Barn Jackson N.H. / by / F.H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Andy and Linda McLane. pg. 27 10. Perkins Farm in Jackson NH, 1870 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. On Black Mountain Road, now part of the Christmas Farm Inn. The red building still stands as part of the inn. Compare with #9. Signed lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh”.

Painting has been re-lined. Original inscription en verso: “Farm House in Jackson NH”. Lent by Andy and Linda McLane. pg. 28 11. Old Barn - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Probably located in Jackson, possibly Thorn Hill Road. Unsigned and no inscription en verso. Lent by Robert Conrad. pg. 29 12. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1883 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. On Rte 302 at the western end of Bartlett. The house, built in 1796, is the Office for Mountain Home Cabins and the barn is the office and warming hut for Bear Notch Ski Touring Center, both owned by the Garland family. The ridgeline is part of Mt Langdon. Signed and dated lower left: “F.H. Shapleigh 1883”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. From the Jackson Historical Society collection.

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pg. 30 13. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1884 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Wide view of Mt Washington with Saco River. Signed and dated lower right: “F.H. Shapleigh 1884”. Inscription en verso: “Mt. Washington from / Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. From the Jackson Historical Society collection. pg. 31 14. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1888 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1888”.

Inscribed en verso:”Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent Anonymously. pg. 32 15. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1889 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Wide view of Mt Washington with Saco River. Compare with #16. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1889”. Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent Anonymously. pg. 33 16. Old Barn in Bartlett NH, 1889 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Wide view of Mt Washington with Saco River. Compare with #15. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1889” Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Allen and Georgia Vogel pg. 34 17. Old Barn in Conway NH, 1879 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Moat Mountain from the east shore of Conway Lake.

Signed and date lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1879”. Inscribed en verso: “Mote Mt from Old Barn, Conway NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Andy and Linda McLane pg. 35 18. Old Barn in Conway NH, 1885 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. IMAGE ONLY, PAINTING NOT IN EXHIBITION. View of Mt Washington looking across Walker’s Pond in Conway. The peak on the left is North Moat. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1885”. Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington and Walker’s Pond from Old Barn in Conway N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Image lent by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; purchased through the Julia L. Whittier Fund. pg. 36 19a. Old Barn in Conway NH, 1883 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Mt Chocorua. The dirt road is Route 16 heading south from Conway. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883”. Inscribed en verso: “Mt Chocorua from Old Barn in Conway N.H. / by / F .H. Shapleigh”. Lent Anonymously. pg. 37 19b. Old Barn in Eaton NH, 1878 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Old Jenkins place in Eaton on Horse Lake Road. House is no longer standing. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1878”. No inscription en verso. Lent by Bill and Linda Morse. pg. 38 20. Old Barn in Bridgton, Maine, 1883 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. View of Mt Washington across Highland Lake. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883”. Inscribed en verso: “Mt Washington from Old Barn in / Bridgton Maine /by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Andy and Linda McLane. pg. 39 21. Old Barn in Farmington Maine, 1886 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. The Sandy River and the mountain in the far distance is Mt. Blue. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1886”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Farmington Maine / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Jeannette Blake. pg. 43 22. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1886 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Note clock is set at five minutes to four, as is the clock in #23. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1886”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett N.H. / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent from the Collection of Charles and Gloria Vogel. pg. 44 23. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1883 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Note clock is set at five minutes to four, as is the clock in #22. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett N.H. / by / F .H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Warren and Leslie Schomaker. pg. 45 24. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1883 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. We believe this kitchen is in Dottie Russell’s house on the Bartlett end of Thorn Hill Road. Compare with #25 and #27. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1883” - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. From the Jackson Historical Society collection.

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pg. 46 25. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1882 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. We believe this kitchen is in Dottie Russell’s house on the Bartlett end of Thorn Hill Road. Compare with #23 and #27. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1882” Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent Anonymously. pg. 47 26. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1891 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. IMAGE ONLY, PAINTING NOT IN EXHIBITION. The fireplace depicted is not one used for cooking. Signed and dated lower right: “F. H. Shapleigh 1891”. Inscribed en verso: “Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh. Image lent by Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; gift of Robert A. and Dorothy H. Goldberg. pg. 48 27. Old Kitchen in Bartlett NH, 1885 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. We believe this kitchen is in Dottie Russell’s house on the Bartlett end of Thorn Hill Road. Compare with #24 and #25. Signed and dated lower left: “F. H. Shapleigh 1885”.

Inscribed en verso: “Old Barn in Bartlett NH / by / F. H. Shapleigh”. Lent by Allen and Georgia Vogel. pg. 49 28. Old Mill in Scituate Mass, 1886 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. Mrs. Shapleigh was from Scituate. Signed and dated lower left: “F.H. Shapleigh 1886”. Inscribed en verso: “Interior Old Mill in Scituate Mass”. Lent by George H. Fernald. pg. 50 29. Window in Room 8, Peacock Inn, Rowsley, 1901 - Watercolor on paper, 10” x 9”. On his last trip to England, Shapleigh’s enthusiasm for antiquities remained strong. This watercolor view, focusing on one corner of a particular lodging room, with its casement window, wainscot chest and Hepplewhite armchair, is Shapleigh’s last known artistic effort.

No exterior views survive from this final trip to England, suggesting that Shapleigh’s customary sketching excursions may have been curtailed by the poor state of his health at that time. Not signed, but titled in artist’s hand Window in Room 8, Peacock Inn, Rowsley June 1901. Lent from the Collection of Charles and Gloria Vogel. pg. 51 31. The Trickey Barn in Jackson NH, 2008 - Oil on canvas, 16” x 24”. The 137 year-old Trickey Barn was part of the Jackson Falls House. After the hotel was demolished in 1970, the land where it stood came under the ownership of the Jackson Grammar School. The 2008 expansion of the school required that the Barn be removed. The Jackson Historical Society paid to have the Barn taken down, preserving the timbers so that it could be re-erected two years later as the new Jackson Public Library. While the Barn could not retain its historic location, we were inspired by Shapleigh to preserve as much history as possible – hence the scene through the open door was recorded in this painting by Stapleton Kearns. Signed and dated lower left: “Stapleton Kearns 2008”. Lent by Emily and Bill Hall. pg. 52 32. The Trickey Barn sited at the Jackson Library, 2013 - Oil on canvas, 10” x 16”. After the Trickey Barn was dismantled by the Historical Society, it was re-erected as the Jackson Public Library. This painting, in the style of Frank Shapleigh, shows what the view would be if the Trickey barn had been moved in tact to the current library site. In the view is the Jackson Church, Carter Notch, Carter Dome and Wildcat Mountain. Inscribed en verso: “View from the Tricky Barn, Jackson, N.H. / Erik Koeppel 2013”. Jackson Historical Society collection.

Images provided by the NH Historical Society pg. 5 Crawford House Studio. Image lent by the New Hampshire Historical Society. pg. 7 Jackson Studio - A. Image lent by the New Hampshire Historical Society. pg. 7 Jackson Studio - B. Image lent by the New Hampshire Historical Society. pg. 11 St Augustine Studio - A. Image lent by the New Hampshire Historical Society. pg. 11 St Augustine Studio - B. Image lent by the New Hampshire Historical Society.

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The Jackson Historical Society, Jackson, New Hampshire