Josiah Stone House
About This Tour
As you study the beautiful murals in this dining room or parlor, note the elements that provide clues to the identity of the artist.
The massive size of the center chimney is a clue to the age of this simple house.
The Josiah Stone House
The Josiah Stone House is a traditional New England cape in Hancock, New Hampshire dating to the early nineteenth century. Josiah Stone moved to Hancock around 1790 and purchased the nearby Elijah Wyman House sometime after 1804. While living in the Wyman House, he built this house a mere thirty feet away from the Wyman House. The Josiah Stone House is not in its original location — in the 1940s it was moved about a quarter mile down Old Dublin Road to its current site.
The Josiah Stone House murals include a water scene, a feature often incorporated in Porter School murals.
This beautifully detailed ship is featured on the water wall. A nearly identical ship appears in the murals in the neighboring Elijah Wyman House.
The beautiful murals in the Josiah Stone House parlor wrap around the entire perimeter of the room, encircling the occupants in both water and landscape scenes. Like other houses in the town of Hancock, the Stone House and the Wyman House interiors are decorated with murals definitely painted by the same hand with the same palette (see here for a comparison). While the murals in the Josiah Stone House are in excellent condition, the ones in the Elijah Wyman House were painted before the plaster had completely cured, and later papered over. Sometime after that, the paper was removed and the walls washed, removing most of the water-soluble pigments that were used to paint the murals. Today, there is an exact impression of what was originally painted there, and with even just remnants of the original colors, the motifs are very clear.
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It is important to note that the Stone House once also had a room with stenciled walls — another form of wall decoration popular in the early nineteenth century — but they are now covered by plaster. According to painted wall scholar Jean Lipman, the stenciled walls were painted by contemporary stenciler, Moses Eaton, Jr. or his father. The Eatons also lived in the town of Hancock and stenciled many houses in this area.
About the Art
About the Artist
The parlor murals are not signed, but it is clear that they were painted by an artist of the Rufus Porter School. The Porter School includes works by artists painting in the style of muralist and inventor Rufus Porter (1782-1884). Porter outlined his formulaic approach to mural painting in later writings for other painters to follow. One of the best-known Porter School muralists was Porter’s nephew, Jonathan D. Poor (1807-45). While Poor trained under Porter, he developed unique elements and a painting style that distinguished his work from that of his uncle. Several of J. D. Poor’s signature elements appear in the Stone House murals.
Poor often painted a village scene above a room’s fireplace, and while not quite a village, the white Federal house and three-story red building found here were motifs frequently used by Poor. As the viewers continues around the room, they encounter additional motifs typically used by J. D. Poor, such as an orchard of trees and a tree with a dead stump at its center. While small, it is sometimes a minor detail such as this that helps give us clues as to who might have painted this wall.
The overmantel in the Josiah Stone House includes a white, Federal house with bold chimneys and a hipped roof and a three-story red building. These elements often appear in murals painted by J. D. Poor.
