Wall Reunion

New England was a grim, stern place 250 years ago. Hard-faced captains and Governors tolerated no compromise among their followers and preachers sagely nodded while Salem witches screamed and shriveled. Occasionally some of these men, their wives or daughters were painted for a posterity which was quick to forget them. Last week in the Worcester Art Museum a collection of such portraits was put on show. Lent by many a learned institution or lately found in many a dusty New England attic, the pictures were a ghostly recollection of pomp and triviality in the late American 1600's.

Known were the names of all the subjects but of only one of the artists, who signed himself T. S. Thomas Smith was a mariner, poet and painter. The last two accomplishments he exhibited in what is supposed to be his self-portrait. Under a skull in the corner he penned:

Why should I the world be minding

Therein world of evils finding.

Then farwell world: farwell thy carres. . . .

Death sounds retreat: I am not sorye. . . .

In 1680 Harvard College paid four pounds four shillings to Major Thomas Smith for copying a portrait of Dr. William Ames. In 1693 Maria Katherine Smith was painted by her father, Captain Thomas Smith. The Worcester Art Museum's director, Francis Henry Taylor, believes the two Smiths are one, hopes to establish by x-rays that he also painted the portraits of Captain George Curwen, Major Thomas Savage, Madam Freake and Baby Mary, all of which were hanging last week in the Worcester Museum.

Although information about Artist Smith is scant the history of most of the sitters is well-known. Reunited once more on the walls of the museum were men who had been friends and enemies. Sir William Phips made his fortune by discovering a wrecked Spanish treasure ship. An incompetent, wasteful Governor of Massachusetts, he was hanging near his friend William Stoughton whom he appointed chief justice of a special tribunal to rid the land of witches. In 1692 Phips, alarmed at Stoughton's wholesale convictions, rescinded his last batch of execution orders. Enraged, Stoughton "refused to sitt upon ye bench." Stern was the face of Governor John Endecott who could abide neither tobacco nor people who needed haircuts and who once mutilated the English flag in order to destroy the "Popish" cross of St. George. Captain George Curwen, who in 1651 was licensed to sell "strong water" in Salem, scowled from a cracking canvas. He once remarked: "As a man dresses, so is he esteemed." He dressed well until he died in 1684, a rich property owner. Governor Thomas Dudley's face revealed the harsh Puritanism which won him praise and honors but never affection. Sniffing heresy in every act of tolerance, he died with a scrap of verse in his pocket which urged judges and churchmen to guard against "such as do a toleration hatch." The galleries also included portraits of Edward Rawson who rode clattering through High Street, Boston, to announce the accession of James II to the Throne of England, the Rev. John Davenport, friend of Cotton Mather, famed for his "ejaculatory prayers" and the Rev. Joint Bailey who died seeing his Savior and murmuring to his wife, "Oh, what shall I say, He is altogether lovely!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.