Overmantel

Painted overmantel panel taken from the Perez Walker House, Sturbridge, MA. The painted landscape – while from a Sturbridge house – does not depict a local scene. The harbor, full of ships, suggests a port city, rather than an inland town. Densely grouped buildings surround the harbor. In the foreground are additional houses, barns, a grist mill with water wheel, and trees and hedgerows. Four very small and cows are grouped in the center foreground, while a white horse gallops from right to left in the field above. Two women converse at the center, while in the lower right-hand corner a uniformed soldier holds hands and converses with a young woman. A flock of very small sheep grazes in a field at the left. Trees, large rocks, and hedgerows are drawn and painted in a very stylized manner and the whole is painted in an unskilled manner, but with compelling charm and imagination.