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Maine History Online

Maine History Online

A Maine Historical Society Website

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Part I: The Early Years

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1829

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1829

Item 4119 info
Maine Historical Society

By the mid 1820s, a number of ornamental, portrait, or landscape painters made their livings in Portland.

However, itinerants continued to make the city an important stop.

Thomas Badger (1792-1868) was born in South Reading, Massachusetts, and had a studio in Boston. By the 1830s, he found patronage among the faculty of Bowdoin College, prominent Portlanders like the Clapp family, and the gentry of Kennebunk.

Badger painted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), an 1825 graduate of Bowdoin who became Professor of Modern Languages there in 1829.