Early Pilgrims of New England Going to Worship
Artist: George Henry Boughton (American, 1833-1905)
Date: 1872
Dimensions:
Frame: 20 1/4 × 31 × 2 1/2 in. (51.4 × 78.7 × 6.4 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott
Object number: 1957.30
Label Text:Americans and Europeans alike shared a nostalgic fascination with the origins of the United States at a time of increasing urbanization and industrialization in the second half of the 19th century. George Henry Boughton, who moved to England in 1861, where he painted this work, was inspired by stories of the early Puritans. He inscribed on the back of the painting: “The Early Settlers of New England were obliged to go armed on their way to Church in order to protect themselves against the hostile Indians and the Wild Beasts of the forests.”
Such sensationalized and romanticized views of Colonial life were everywhere in American popular culture of the time, from Nathaniel Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride (1860), to the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday (1863).
Such sensationalized and romanticized views of Colonial life were everywhere in American popular culture of the time, from Nathaniel Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride (1860), to the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday (1863).
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In Collection(s)