Art in America:  the Puritans
            Although the  explorers and nations that established outposts and communities in the Americas  had their own motives for what they did, few were as dedicated to spiritual glory as the Puritans.  Starting with the Pilgrim, separatist colony at Plymouth in 1620 and   ending with the failure of Puritanism in the mid 18th century, this group of people would leave an indelible mark on the American vision, though there own would never be realized.
        As we have seen, the great migration of 1630 brought to American shores many of the greatest intellectual leaders of the Puritan movement.  John Winthrop would be one of the more notable.  His famous sermon on the Arbella, A Model of Christian Charity", would establish the foundation of American Puritanism.  That foundation rested on the belief that his people were the modern day tribe of Israel seeking their promised land in direct covenant with god.  They were to establish a "city on the hill" and become the example of Christian leadership that the world would look to for guidance.    In a sense this was contrary to the endeavors of both the French and Spanish colonial effort for the Puritan model sought to destroy the old society of Europe and bring about a new millennium.  The French and Spanish wanted to recreate their culture and values on a new shore.  This theme of seeking newness and rejecting the European heritage would become an American vision.  Where other peoples reveled in the value and timelessness of their history, Puritan America would hold fresh endeavor , new landscape and unsullied wilderness as the foundation of  spiritual exuberance and the final part of God's great design. Think how many place names you know of that begin with the word "New . . . . ".
    Although mainstream Catholics had never taken the book of Revelations seriously, the Puritans not only accepted its foretelling as true prophecy, but saw themselves as acting out the final drama. They perceived  their place in a cosmological grand design through its prediction of the final apocryphal battle between the Anti-Christ and God.  As for many in today's world, there was a strong belief that the final times were at hand and the elect needed to prepare for the struggle and leadership in the ensuing millennium. With hindsight, the benefit of Charlie Manson's  "Helter-Skelter" and the last stand of David Korish to guide us, it is hard to take the Puritan's cosmology seriously.  We must not forget, however, that these were people who entertained no doubts about their religion and believed absolutely in their God's omnipotence.
    People express their faith as art, and they use their technology and environment as a medium. Whatever alternative rock and roll means to you, or to your teachers 30 years ago, its essence, and thus, its acceptance, depends upon the emotional and spiritual strings it pulls in your heart and mind.  The Puritans were no different.  Although they were a people who's spiritual release was found in church, whose art form was the theater of the pulpit, they nevertheless created objects which appealed to their eye.  Their abhorrence of "popish" church decoration and belief in the biblical proscription of "false image" and idolatry limited their use of art as religious expression, the primary vehicle of commission and  funding in Europe. Nevertheless, chairs had to made, color selected and buildings built.  All of these things would reflect not only the context of their lives but their spiritual leanings as well.
 
 
Early Puritan architecture was limited by time, the lack of tooling and labor.  Pilgrims, the first Puritans to land on American shores, had, by the spring of 1621, suffered devastating losses to winter kill.  They had to devise shelter  and a farming infrastructure before another winter struck.  Their first dwellings would be little more then one room huts of "daub and wattle".  Frequently they were dug into the ground several feet to take advantage of geo thermal gain. Here we see the typical skills of an English village being reflected in the building.  The roof was thatch, the walls daub and wattle, and the fence riven.  Perhaps what is most noteworthy is the absence of decoration and adornment.  These were people that had little time for the extras in life.  Basic survival was foremost in their minds, and this dwelling fills that requirement excellently well. 
    Your text clearly demonstrates that although the devastation of an early winter, late spring, bad hail storm or any number of other natural disasters could tip the community's survival over the edge, by the late 1600's, they had managed to secure a foothold that allowed more division of labor within the community and some dependable surpluses.  Architecture requiring the services of professional builders and skilled tradesman developed.  Their building styles were still limited to wood so few of the dwellings of late 17th century Puritans sill exist. One of the few is the house of Joseph Capen.
 
Capen was a middle class minister.  He seemed to be a man of broad views given the fact that he argued in defense of the Salem witches.  His house is structured similar to any other parish minister even today.  A room to keep his small library, a parlor to receive parishioners and a living space for family upstairs. 
    As in the Plymouth cottage above, the building reflects local context.  Windows are small, siding is riven, roofing is of split shakes. Only the glass and the bricks would have been imported from England. Take note of the embellishments;  a pendent on the far gable, a set of show braces around the door and corbelling on the top of the chimney. 
Interestingly enough, the style of the house still reflects the England of Henry II, 600 years before. Henry had decreed that property tax would be assessed on the basis of a house's "footprint" or square feet where it touches the ground.  Englishmen started building houses with a cantilevered overhang in order to increase the size of their second story without having to pay corresponding taxes. Here we see the same device applied to a house where land, although limited by the village leaders, was certainly in more abundance than England and not taxed on the basis of footprint.  A walk thorough Waterville would find many houses with this same architectural design work. Like Goodman Reverend  Capon, the owners probably have no idea that they are repeating a style developed to beat a 12th century tax code.
    By the turn of the century, what had been a tenuous Puritan foothold had become a thriving center of trade and development. Water resources had allowed the development of saw mills, a feature that could not exist in a deforested England.  Building material was far cheaper and of better quality and land division laws had been relaxed.  Although the Puritans despised the churches and idolatry of Anglican England, they had to construct places where the congregation could meet.   They could not bring themselves to call such places "churches", so the American "meeting house" came into being.  The only one remaining is the Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham, Massachusetts.
 
The placement of this structure reflects the Puritan preoccupation with human works that stand as a beacon. It brings to mind Winthrop's "City on a hill".  Another interesting point is the number of windows.  Getting glass into a structure was a major operation in these days and quite expensive.  The glass would have had to have been shipped from England.  This was a dwelling that was not meant to be heated, but was meant to be naturally illuminated inside.  In a sense, the Puritans seem to be using light as a method of adorning their meeting place.  Certainly this would suggest a host of allegorical meaning. 
    The building is square and the roof is what is known today as a Boston hip. This type of structure causes the building to be almost identical no matter what side it is viewed from.  This may have had 
symbolic meaning or it could have been a way to maximize interior loft space.  It is  the interior that makes this building so remarkable.
 
As you can see, the name "old ship" comes from the large and well braced rafters that hold up the hip roof.  It looks like the hold of a large ship.  You will also notice the layout of the floor.  There are boxes meant to separate out the members.  This separation was done by family and reflects the calvinist philosophy of a family structure recreating the religious structure. Originally, there were no seats in this building although some were added in the 19th century. 

     Another interesting aspect of Puritan life and art was their relationship to physical death.  Certainly they would have been well aquatinted.  Mortality in the early days was appalling.  75 per cent of all the women and 45 percent of all men that came over on the Mayflower were dead before the end of the first year. Violent death could occur at any moment at the hands of Native Americans, accidental death by such things as drowning or bleeding  from a wound, "wasting" from infection, or dying   .
at childbirth.  All were common place and required a ritual. The Puritans seemed at times to revel in the final-ness of death and could conduct what to us are the most gruesome of rituals.  Kissing and caressing the dead, displaying the body until near putrefaction, insisting that children fully participate in burial rites. The Puritans even included death in their education of the young. Cotton Mather's advice to the young is instructive ". . . go into Burying-Place, CHILDREN; you will there see Graves as short as your selves. Yea, you may be at Play one Hour; Dead, Dead the next. Tis not likely that you will all live to grow up."   In the horn books used at school, children learned to remember "G" and "T" in the alphabet by way of the following memonic devices "T--Time cuts down all/Both great and small." or "G: As runs the glass/ Man’s life doth pass"
Surely this had a social utility in an environment where death was so common yet their preoccupation with the grisly aspects of mortal death is certainly peculiar.This stone reflects some of the symbology employed in  their gravestone markers.  These stones are located at Marblehead cemetery.   This is the grave of Rebeka Bonfild . . ."who did much good in her life". Notice the skull and wings of the death angel at the head.
 
Here are two very common motifs found in many carvings and headstones. On the left the crossbones, symbolizing the humble position of any one person in god's great design. "There must we all go" as the Puritans would say.  On the right we see the hourglass, reminding all christians that the sands of their lives inexorably flow by.  That their good works and godly behavior is needed now, not later when   death may cut short the most serious of Christian endeavor. 

 

Painting was not a popular art form in Puritan America.  Not because of any religious proscription, but because of the lack of money to train, support and employ painters.  Still, some families were able to employ local talent who could create a likeness. They would hire a painter, known as a"limner" to create the image.   Today, we see these attempts as rather childlike, the Puritans, however, saw them from a different perspective.  They wanted the portrait maker to record the glory, the towering intellect, the majestic being of the individual.  The portrait did not have to look just like the individual.  In fact, portraits were known as "shades".  From their standpoint, life and countenance changed and aged incessantly according to God's design so a real portrait that precisely depicted an individual was an impossibility.  What he or she stood for, what they accomplished, their lasting deeds - these were the things that a "shade" needed to record.  Keep in mind as you view Puritan painting that our standards of what art should look like has been defined by Eastman's invention of portable and foolproof cameras.  Our addiction to precise likenesses as a standard of "good" art is purely culture bound.  The Puritans, as many other cultures do, require the viewer to look beyond a shallow comparison of how close the image matches a transitory and fleeting ghost of what we believe to be the "real" image, and appreciate the things that truly last.
 
This is Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and her baby, Mary.  It was painted in the early 1670's.  Elizabneth was married to a Boston merchant and was better off, financially, then most of her era.  This is Elizabeth in her Sunday best.  Look at the skill she must have had in her hands to have created the beautiful lace collar and kerchief that she wears.  She has obviously maintained a frugal household that supported the endeavors of her husband as she displays a wrought bracelet, a well curtained parlor and upholstered chair. The white apron, worn over her best clothing, tells all that she is the type of Woman who is ready to work hard and does not let the frivolity of fine wear get in the way of her household duty. The use of red gatherings on the sleeves and the bright  red under dress is certainly a sign that she likes a little "flash"  in her life. If you notice, she not only has a red under dress, but has apparently embroidered it along the hem.  Who did she hope would examine her stitching skills here? 
     Although the painting initially did not have a child in it, Elizabeth's fecundity had to be recorded and celebrated  and so Mary was painted in later on.
The relationship between Puritan husband and wife has often been the subject of ridicule or derision.  In our temporal arrogrance we assume that passon and satisfaction must be unique to our own age.  Read Ann Bradstreet's poem "To my Dear and Loving Husband "

 If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
  Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
  I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold
 Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
  Nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
  Thy love is such I can no way repay.
  The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
  Then while we live, in love let's so persever
 That when we live no more, we may live ever.



 
 

Here is Anne Pollard.  She was over a hundred years old when this shade was created.  It is one of the best views of a 17th century Puritan that we have.  We see here a life lived by the old lights, a matron who survived her generation through her faith and a determination to testify with her living.  The painting is very forceful.  Whoever created this shade went further then just creating a story line of propriety.  You might also notice the dark background and tones of the colors.  Some art critics have suggested that whoever this limner was, he was probably familiar with Dutch painting or at least European educated.  I am not so sure that the treatment of tone is so different then many other 18th century efforts, but it may be. 

 
 
Even the most high and mighty have to sit down sometime. Puritan taste in chairs reflected the appeal of straight and strong shafts that tended to rise up.  The wood lathe had become a popular tool with furniture builders and its turned  products dominated furniture for several years.  Turning even became a hobby for gentleman.  In all of these chairs you can see the effect.  This is sometimes called "architectural" design in that it is heavily dominated by straight vertical and horizontal pieces fastened at both ends - like a house might be.  If you look at them they almost resemble the steeples of churches.

As I have mentioned before, the Puritans were focused on Gospel, teaching and living exemplary lives.  They were a people who occupied themselves with powerfully spiritual pursuits, but expressed them in words and sermon.  Moreover, the earliest, and foundational, generation poured all their energy into surviving a hostile wilderness.  Little remained for artistic expression.  Yet, as with every era and every people, they could not but help to express their sense of life's rhythm and meaning in the things they created.  Although their city of god on the hill overlooking Canaan and their mission to lead the world into God's mind never came to be, they have still become part of our enduring vision.