Details of one of the murals in The Rufus Porter Museum, circa 1825-28.

Lindberg was poring over Jean Lipman’s1968 book, Rufus Porter: Yankee Pioneer,when she discovered Porter’s connection to a place her own family has often returned. In 1922, Lindberg’s grandfather, a Rhode Island osteopath and avid fisherman, bought a one-room camp on Highland Lake, 40 miles northwest of Portland, Maine. Her grandmother’s first response was tears, but the family grew to love their rustic retreat.

The compound now extends to three houses shared by several generations. Built in 1954, Julie and Carl’s lakeside property is a repository for all things Maine. Knotty pine paneling and braided rugs provide a comfortable backdrop for quilts, decoys, enamelware, yellowware, natural and geological specimens, Indian artifacts and paintings by local artists.

The Porters’ farm stood four miles away. From high on a ridge with views to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the Porters once herded their livestock down the hill to nearby Moose Pond, a long, dark lake shaded by feathery-looking trees at the foot of gently rounded Pleasant Mountain. Anyone who has studied Porter’s landscapes will instantly recognize the artist’s inspiration. Hipped-roof Federal houses like the kind Porter depicted can be spotted nearby on Bridgton’s green.

Views of Portland – including the harbor, the observatory and militia men drilling – also appear in Porter’s murals, as do references to Hawaii, where the artist traveled between 1817 and 1819. In 1807, Porter walked to Portland, where he remained until 1816, working as a house painter and a decorator of walls, floors and furniture. A year after he married in 1815, the artist moved to New Haven, Conn., where he taught music, ran a dancing school and began painting miniatures. To aid him in his work, the itinerant artist used a camera obscura, which he pulled along with him on a cart.

Porter’s career as a muralist was at its height between 1824 and 1845. Thereafter, scientific pursuits captured his imagination. Porter experimented with electrotype and the telegraph, bought an interest in the New York Mechanic in 1840 and founded Scientific American in 1845. “A mechanical Johnny Appleseed,” as Lipman described him, Porter died in New Haven in 1884.

Plans for a Rufus Porter museum in Bridgton arose after a magnificent set of Porter murals, 15 in all, unexpectedly turned up in June 2002 at Jackson’s International Auctioneers & Appraisers in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The only set that is both signed and dated, the 1838 paintings on plaster were removed intact from the Dr Francis Howe house in Westwood, Mass., when it was demolished in 1965. In 1984, after changing hands several times, the paintings were given to Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, Iowa. The largest mural is nearly 12 by 7 feet.

First photographed in 1925 and subsequently illustrated in Rufus Porter, The Flowering of American Folk Art and American Folk Painters of Three Centuries, the murals are also signed by the artist’s son, Stephen Twombley Porter. Rufus Porter is known to have collaborated with his nephew Jonathan Poor and Moses Eaton Jr, as well. Executed on dry plaster applied to lath, the paintings depict pastures, farmhouses and soft hills swelling from behind elongated lakes dotted with sailing ships and steamboats.

Julie Lindberg with the small but growing collection of Porter art and artifacts. The top two are rare Porter miniatures with electrotype inscriptions.

Knowing of Lindberg’s interest in Porter, Don Heller and Kim Washam, dealers in Woodbury, Conn., and Portland, contacted Lindberg prior to the auction.

“I inherited something of a family interest in his work,” says Don Heller, who grew up in a house in Portland with Porter murals and still lives there. Heller flew out to look at the Howe murals at Jackson’s. After buying them in partnership with the Lindbergs for $172,500, the dealer had the set crated, shipped to the East Coast on an air-ride truck, and stored in a climate-controlled warehouse. To wide acclaim, Heller-Washam displayed two of the murals at the American Antiques Show in New York in January 2003.

“We all thought it was very important to keep the set together. We could have easily broken it up and sold the murals individually for more money,” Heller says now. He adds, “Porter did these with his son. Artistically, he pulled out all the stops to show his son the possibilities. They represent the zenith of Rufus Porter’s artistic career.”

Julie Lindberg fervently hoped that the Howe murals would go to a museum, but for many institutions the cost of buying the entire set and allocating space for its display were prohibitive. She began thinking that the best place for the murals might be Bridgton itself.

A two-acre property at 67 North High Street, on the road toward Moose Pond, that the Lindbergs purchased in September 2004 seemed like the obvious place for a museum devoted to Rufus Porter. A 1789 dwelling there, possibly the home of Bridgton’s first minister, contains Porter murals that Tom Johnson, now the curator at the Old York Historical Society in York, Maine, discovered when he was removing wallpaper in 1985. Adjacent is an 1805 dwelling that museum founders hope will one day contain a research library devoted to Porter’s accomplishments and living quarters for future directors.

In October 2004, more than 50 Bridgton residents stepped forward, ready to make The Rufus Porter Museum and Cultural Heritage Center a reality. Currently affiliated with the Bridgton Friends of the Arts, the museum, which is seeking independent not-for-profit status, is accepting tax-deductible contributions toward the construction of a parking lot and property renovations. In time, founders plan to move an antique barn to the site that will house the Howe murals as well as serve as an exhibition and teaching facility that will be open to the public year round.

“No one ever dreamed that this project would grow so quickly,” says Beth Cossey, president of the museum’s board of directors, who is leading the campaign to raise several million dollars to move and erect the barn, acquire the Howe murals, create an endowment and hire professional staff.

This summer, visitors to The Rufus Porter Museum may admire the house’s original murals and a small but growing collection of Porter art and artifacts. Highlights include a landscape painting on panel; miniature portraits, among them the only known double profile portrait by Porter; a rare pair of single portraits with electrotype inscriptions; and a painted slant front desk almost certainly decorated by the muralist. There are three signed and dated 1825 portraits by John Brewster Jr of members of the Perley family, which, like the Porters, moved to the area from West Boxford, Mass.

Also on view are works by John Mead, a local artist who is especially well known for fish pictures; Vivian Milner Akers, who did hundreds of small landscapes in the Lakes Region in the 1930s and 1940s; and weathervanes by James Lombard, a Bridgton farmer and cabinetmaker. A temporary display of primitive portraits of children features works by Ammi Phillips, Milton Hopkins, Jacob Frymire and Joseph Whiting Stock.

With the help of the Bridgton community and Porter admirers everywhere, The Rufus Porter Museum and Cultural Heritage Center is on its way to becoming a recognized center for the work of an exceptional individual who exemplified the striving spirit of his time.

The Rufus Porter Museum is at 67 North High Street, Route 302. For information, call 207-647-2828 or visit