The Rufus Porter Bio

Early American primitive artists were blessed with fertile imaginations. They painted on the walls of their homes scenes of their typical days, depicting farm scenes, country scenes, and nautical scenes, all in very simple terms, but pleasing and attractive as a whole.

Yvonne is reviving that period in her own way. She most closely follows the style of artist Rufus Porter, who was born in 1792, and lived and traveled the early American scene for 92 years. Porter is not well known or publicized today, and remains one of the more mysterious artists of the early 1800's. Some of his works are still in circulation, mostly as wall paintings in homes. Those paintings show his style to be simple and unpretentious. His style developed from Native American craft techniques, not continental or academic traditions. He was a teacher and inventor as well as an artist, and spent most of his working years travelling and painting walls in homes and taverns. He was also a writer and editor, having founded Scientific American magazine. Much of his writing was for the layperson, in keeping with his simple art form.

Yvonne is keeping alive some of the tradition of that era, namely the imagination and simplicity, along with her own uniqueness. Her medium is mostly primitive style on trunks, and other old wooden and tin pieces, practical pieces that can be displayed in the everyday home. Porter's influence is evident in the perfect trees, and general tones of Yvonne's art.

Rufus Porter Biography

PORTER, Rufus, inventor, born in West Boxford, Massachusetts, 1 May, 1792 ; died in New Haven, Connecticut, 13 August, 1884; buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, West Haven, Connecticut. He early showed mechanical genius. Porter started school when he was 4 years old in West Boxford, Massachusetts. He later attended Fryeburg Academy at the age of 12, for six months. In 1807 his parents apprenticed him to a shoemaker, but he soon gave up this trade, and occupied himself by playing the fife for military companies, and the violin for dancing parties.

Three years later he was apprenticed to a house-painter. During the war of 1812 he was occupied in painting gun-boats, and as fifer to the Portland light infantry. In 1813 he painted sleighs at Denmark, Maine, beat the drum for the soldiers, taught others to do the same, and wrote a book on the art of drumming, and he then enlisted in the militia for several months.

In 1816, Porter married Eunice Twombly and was living in New Haven, Connecticut, where he conducted a dancing school and started portrait painting. Subsequently he was a teacher, but was unable to remain in one place, and so led a wandering life. During 1818-19, Porter took a trading voyage to the Northwest Coast and Hawaii. In 1819-20, Porter traveled by coach and on foot throughout New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, painting portraits. Also, in 1820 he made a camera-obscura with a lens and a mirror so arranged that with its aid he could draw a satisfactory portrait in fifteen minutes. With this apparatus he traveled through the country until he invented a revolving almanac, when he at once stopped his painting in order to introduce his latest device.

His next project was a twin boat to be propelled by horse-power, but it proved unsuccessful, and he turned to portrait-painting again. In 1824 he began landscape-painting, but relinquished it to build a horse flat-boat. He invented a successful cord-making machine in 1825, and thereafter produced a clock, a steam carriage, a portable horse-power, corn-sheller, churn, a washing-machine, signal telegraph, fire-alarm, and numerous other articles. During 1825-26, Porter published four editions of A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts, and Interesting Experiments in Concord, New Hampshire. Throughout the 1830's, he painted murals in Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

In 1840 he became editor of the " New York Mechanic," which prospered, and in the following year he moved it to Boston, where he called it the " American Mechanic." The new art of electrotyping there attracted his attention, and he gave up editorial work in order to occupy himself with the new invention. He devised at this period a revolving rifle, which he sold to Colonel Samuel Colt for $100. In 1845 he returned to New York and engaged in electrotyping, and about this time he founded the "Scientific American," the first issue of which bears the date 28 August, 1845. At the end of six months he was glad to dispose of his interest in the paper, and then occupied himself with his inventions. These included a flying-ship, trip-hammer, fog-whistle, engine-lathe, balanced valve, rotary plough, reaction wind-wheel, portable house, thermo-engine, rotary engine, and scores of others.

Rufus Porter, The Artist

Starting as a portraitist before 1820, Porter went on to paint murals depicting the American rural scene in hundreds of homes and inns from Maine to Virginia. From simple silhouettes and ivory miniatures, to scenes of entire towns or harbors, Porter spread his art throughout New England. Often, he would do portraits of the principal household members where he was painting the murals.

His work consisted of a realistic clarity combined with a simplistic methodology. He had no formal art training, and after gaining some experience, rejected the academic methods of the time. Working as an itinerant artist, and flair for rapidity and efficiency, reinforced each other. Porter was one of the first artists to work as a portraitist in America, nearly 50 years before the word portraitist entered the American English language.

Porter painted small ivory portraits and entire interiors of homes and inns in his work. He cut silhouettes as well. His methods and knowledge of art were published in art instruction books.

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Rufus Porter Biography

Rufus Porter, The Artist