George Porter Fernald at work on Hamilton House mural

Description

Artist George Porter Fernald captured in the act of painting a mural in the drawing room at Hamilton House, South Berwick, Maine, in October of 1907. Having already completed an Italian-inspired mural in the Hamilton House dining room in 1905, Fernald was asked back to paint a mural in the house's drawing room in imitation of the French scenic wallpaper Les Monuments de Paris. In place of Parisian landmarks, however, Fernald painted the landmarks of the Piscataqua region – Fort McKleary and the Lady Pepperell House in Kittery; the mills of Dover; the Langdon House, John Paul Jones House, and Governor Wentworth Mansion of Portsmouth; and the Sarah Orne Jewett and Hamilton Houses of South Berwick among them. As before, he painted over the existing wallpaper in the room but this time left sections of the wallpaper unpainted, cleverly incorporating the leafy design of the paper into the mural as foliage on the trees.