Early Pilgrims of New England Going to Worship

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Early Pilgrims of New England Going to Worship

Artist George Henry Boughton (American, 1833-1905)

Date1872

DimensionsFrame: 20 1/4 × 31 × 2 1/2 in. (51.4 × 78.7 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1957.30

Not on View

Label TextAmericans 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).Published References

Art Journal, June 1, 1867, p. 140.

G.H. Boughton Paintings, bound collection of photographs, New York Public Library, n.d., III, pl. 46.

"Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, October-December 1957," Art Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1, Spring 1958, p. 85.

"Art and American Life," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 7, no. 3, Autumn 1964, repr. p. 54.

Young, Mahonri Sharp, "From holwing wilderness to Queensborough Bridge," Apollo, vol. 86, no. 70, Dec. 1967, p. 500.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 26, pl. 44.

Wilson, Richard Guy, "Presence of the past," in The American Renaissance, Brooklyn, 1979, p. 42, repr. (not in exhibition)

Kammen, Michael G., Meadows of Memory, Austin, 1992, p. 76, fig. 2-16.

Keesee, Tim, American Government, 3rd ed., Greenville, SC, BJU Press, 2014, repr. (col.) p. 34.