Early Wall Painting Techniques
The decoratively painted wall is a unique and rare art form that survives inside a select number of historic American buildings today. A popular form of interior decoration in the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, the painted wall is not just an aesthetic addition to an interior space, but also an exciting connection to the past.
Painted walls can be categorized into three different painting techniques: freehand brushstroke painting, stencil painting, and mural painting. These artworks were typically completed by itinerant artists who traveled from town to town offering their services. While very few artists signed their walls, many used distinctive styles or motifs that have allowed modern-day scholars to attribute their works. In many cases, no matter the technique used, painters typically utilized repetitive motifs and/or patterns to create their designs while also creatively adapting them to each room’s architectural features.
Freehand Brushstroke Painting
Freehand brushstroke painting is the earliest form of wall painting found in the northeast United States and was popular between 1790-1820. This type of painting is a very specific technique that involves the use of a brush and paint. The loaded brush is applied to the wall with pressure, creating a circle or bulb shape, and then the pressure is lightened and the brush dragged to create a line or tail. The resulting shape — similar to a tadpole — can be repeated and combined to create other shapes. Brushstroke painting was highly individual, with very few similarities from house to house. Unlike the other two types of wall painting, brushstroke painters did not use common motifs/elements that can be used to connect the artist to walls in different locations.
In freehand brushstroke painting, the painter often used an irregular curve template, today known as a French curve, to guide the brushstroke in order to ensure that the curves in the design remained consistent. The painter then used individual brushstrokes to create the remaining part of the design, typically a repetitive composition of shapes and figures — a technique taking a great amount of skill and patience. While brushstroke painting occasionally mimics the design formulas of wallpaper, this is rare.
This example of freehand brushstroke painting was documented in the Burdick House in Chaplin, Connecticut.
Stenciling
​Overlapping chronologically with freehand brushstroke painting, stenciled walls typically date to between 1815-40. Most stencilers created their designs following similar formulas and using similar design elements, including a border (or frieze) just below the ceiling, a second horizontal band at the chair rail, and a third border above the baseboard. Vertical borders, called uprights, divided the walls into panels, with floral and geometric elements placed in between as fillers. Stenciling designs mimicked wallpaper as they are executed in a repetitive pattern and take up the entirety of the wall. Stencilers often stenciled elements using green and red, while gray or yellow (and less commonly, pink) were typically chosen for the wall’s primary color.
Cut from shellacked or varnished heavy paper, stencils can be easily fabricated and replicated, therefore making this type of painting particularly difficult to attribute as artists adopted many of the same stencil motifs. Fortunately, Historic New England’s collections include the stencil kit of Moses Eaton, Jr., one of the most well-known stencilers who worked in the Northeast. By comparing Eaton’s actual stencils with stenciled walls, scholars are able to attribute Eaton’s work.
This stenciled wall in the Frieze House in Deerfield, New Hampshire incorporates motifs associated with noted stenciled Moses Eaton, Jr.
Mural Painting
Muraled walls typically date between 1820-40, and with a few exceptions, depict scenes of rural landscapes. Some muralists painted using a combination of freehand painting for the overall scene and stenciling for details such as buildings and animals, while others opted to paint entirely freehand. Rufus Porter, perhaps the best-known muralist today, painted his murals using a very formulaic approach: large trees in the foreground, with a landscape or water scene in the background, decorated with both stenciled buildings and freehand motifs. Porter used many of the same details in his murals, including stenciled ferns in the foreground, feathery trees, the same houses and sailing vessels, and his own style of cultivated fields. Porter’s nephew, J. D. Poor, adopted Porter’s general approach to mural design but added his own motifs and style. Popular Poor motifs include orchards, sumac bushes, and hat-shaped trees. Artists who share Porter’s approach to mural design are known collectively as the “Rufus Porter School.”​
These J. D. Poor murals were removed from the Capt. Dudley Haines House in Readfield, Maine. They are now in the collections of the Shelburne Museum.
As tastes changed, many decoratively painted walls were covered with wallpaper or painted over.
John Avery and his three sons were muralists with their own distinctive way of painting walls. Avery murals typically include multiple horizontal bands of shrubs and rolling hills/mountains, both working to communicate a change in the landscape over distance. As in murals of the Rufus Porter School, trees in the foreground may reach up to the ceiling. Today, many Avery murals have suffered crazing, or flaking, over time, caused by a reaction between the paint and a glaze that Avery used to prepare the wall. Other Avery walls have yellowed due to a chemical reaction between the paint and a protective coat of shellac that was applied later, with the intention of helping to preserve the mural.
In recent years, several Orison Woods murals have come to light. Woods’ murals are typically found in the vicinity of Auburn, Maine. His flat scenes, painted without perspective or vanishing lines feature whimsically curvy renditions of tree branches, and flat, non-dimensional masted ships, making his murals readily identifiable.
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, hand-painted wall decoration appears to have fallen out of fashion and decoratively painted walls of all types were papered over or destroyed. Our Virtual Museum presents surviving examples of each style of wall painting. Please explore the Immersive Tours to see more examples and gain a better understanding of the three different types!
Sources
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Brown, Anne Eckert. American Wall Stenciling 1790-1840. University Press of New England, 2003.
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Coffin, Margaret. Borders and Scrolls, Early American Brush-Stroke Wall Painting. Albany Institute of Art, 1986.
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Lefko, Linda C. & Jane E. Radcliffe. Folk Art Murals of the Rufus Porter School: New England Landscapes 1825-1845. Schiffer Ltd., 2011.