Biografie von Rufus PORTER (1792-1884)

Birth place: West Boxford, MA

Death place: New Haven, CT (visiting one of his sons)

Profession: Itinerant portrait and mural painter, silhouettist, author, editor, inventor

Work: Maine State Mus. (wall fresco from private house in Winthrop, Maine); Rockefeller Folk Art Ctr., Williamsburg, VA

Comments: One of America"s most fascinating artists of the 19th-century, Porter was also a brilliant inventor. He was brought up in Maine, beginning around 1800. About 1810, he began his career there as a house and sign painter, shoemaker, and farmer. In 1816, he became a portrait painter in New Haven, CT, where he also made fiddles. He worked as an itinerant portrait painter throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic states until c.1823, traveling as far South as Virginia. In 1823, he began to paint landscapes as well as portrait miniatures (on ivory and paper). He also created silhouettes using a camera obscura of his own design, and could complete an exacting silhouette in 15 minutes. Porter continued his itinerant ways, and from 1824-45 traveled about, painting the landscape murals for which he is best known. His more than 150 murals usually featured New England country scenes and included such motifs as steamboats and barns; they were often painted either over mantelpieces or around the entire room. In 1840, in NYC, he started the magazine, New York Mechanic, soon changing its name to American Mechanic which, in turn, became Scientific American. By 1845, he had quit painting his murals in favor of editing the magazine. He also continued his work as an inventor and was the author of several books, including A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts and Interesting Experiments (1825-26). Despite the lack of a formal education, Porter was a brilliant and meticulous inventor. To name a few of his numerous inventions: he was the first person to engineer the moving of an entire 3-story home in Connecticut; he invented modular housing; built his own steam auto in 1830, and a steam engine that is the precursor to modern automotives; he invented the revolving-barrel rifle; plus, a small dirigible airship with pointed ends. Although his portraits were as precise as those of Saint-MÈmin, his murals reveal his joy in paining scenes of whimsy and fantasy rather than the accute observation of nature one might come to expect from an inventor who was always mechanically precise. He even published a series of essays about his mural paintings in Scientific American. He is even known to have experimented with deliberately abstract woodcuts, anticipating modern art by nearly a century. Despite his genius and prolific production, Porter was a maverick with little financial sense, and was never rewarded with wealth or status. The artist Stephen Twombly Porter was his son, and Jonathan D. Poor was his nephew (see entries).

Sources: G&W; Lipman, Rufus Porter, Yankee Wall Painter, contains a checklist and 25 repros.; see also: Lipman and Winchester, 57-66; Little, American Decorative Wall Painting, 132; DAB. More recently see Baigell, Dictionary; Lipman, Rufus Porter Rediscovered, exh. cat., Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, 1980; 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 110; add'l info courtesy Porter lecturer, Gregory Smart (Lexington, MA)