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Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were both
members of the class of 1825 at Bowdoin College, and both went on
to become seminal forces in American literature, defining for a new
nation a fresh and authentic literary American voice. In response
to their fame and popularity, American visual artists of the period
created paintings, sculptures, and prints lionizing the authors and
depicting their characters and stories. In turn, both Hawthorne
and Longfellow had a serious appreciation for fine and decorative
arts and drew inspiration from these for their writing.
A new exhibition entitled Poetic Truths has just opened at the
Bowdoin College Museum of Art to explore this interchange and to
set these writers and artists within the context of place and the
crosscurrents of the larger art world – namely in the duality of Neo
Classicism and Romanticism.
Along with Washington Irving, Hawthorne and Longfellow are
commonly considered the cornerstones of a nascent American
literature. Well-educated in the classics and liberal arts and drawn
to European culture at the same time that they strove to depict the
heritage of a new nation, Hawthorne and Longfellow 's lives shared
numerous commonalities and intersected at crucial points in their
artistic journeys. But it was at Bowdoin College in Brunswick,
Maine, in 1825, that Hawthorne and Longfellow would first meet.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem,
Massachusetts, and attended Bowdoin from 1821-1825. His first
novel, Fanshawe, was self-published in 1828 and was said to be
based on his college experiences. Hawthorne lived at the
Transcendentalist Brook Farm in Concord before marrying Sophia
Peabody in 1842. The couple lived in Concord, as part of the
American Renaissance artists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.
For a time after his marriage, he did a stint at the Boston Customs
House to support his family. His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter
was published in 1850, followed by several other major
works. Appointed to a consular post in Europe, he went abroad
until 1860, when he returned to Concord and died there in 1864.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ( 1807-1882) was born in Portland,
Maine, where he lived and nurtured early literary ambitions until
age fifteen when he matriculated at Bowdoin College in 1822.
Upon graduation in 1825, he was given a professorship at the
college, but the following year he left to tour the continent and
study modern languages. He returned to Brunswick in 1831, living
for a time in what would become Joshua Chamberlain's home,
teaching and writing with his first wife Mary Potter, who died after
a miscarriage. In 1835 he remarried Frances Appleton (who later
died of burns sustained when her dress caught fire in 1861) and in
1836 accepted a professorship at Harvard, where he remained
until 1882, publishing his major works like Evangeline and Hiawatha.
Hawthorne and Longfellow drew much of their literary material
from their American roots, and they both created a strong sense of
place and pride in their American heritage. The objects in the
exhibition reflect visual artists' desire to add image to the word,
while Hawthorne and Longfellow often returned the compliment
in their descriptive language and in characters such as the women
in Hawthorne's Marble Faun said to be based on acquaintances
like Edmonia Lewis and Louisa Lander, whose work appears in the
exhibition.
 
The exhibition features a number of painted, engraved, and
sculpted portraits by the authors' contemporaries. There is the
youthful portrait by Charles Osgood of Hawthorne in a sedately
realistic style and the more idealized marble bust by Louisa
Lander, created in Rome when she and the Hawthornes lived in
the expatriate community there in 1858. Longfellow is
immortalized shortly before his death by William Edgar Marshall
in an engraving whose chiaroscuro adds a romantic touch to the
gravitas. There is even a commemorative earthenware pitcher
made by Josiah Wedgewood & Sons with the image of Longfellow
and a quotation from the poem, "Turn, Turn, My Wheel," which
speaks to the poet's popularity both at home and abroad.
 
Other works serve as visualizations of Hawthorne's and
Longfellow's most famous works. Tompkins Harrison Matteson's
dark and atmospheric painting of The Pillory Scene from The
Scarlet Letter is an imposing piece, while Robert S. Duncanson's Minnehanna Falls pays tribute to Longfellow's Hiawatha. Both
paintings reflect the underlying Romanticism of the Hudson River
School and their legacy. So, too, does Albert Bierstadt's Departure
of Hiawatha, a small canvas with the luminous color for which the
artist is known.
 
And once again, the contemporary sculptor, Edmonia Lewis is
represented with stunning marble busts.
Lewis, who was the first American of African-American and Native
American heritage to gain recognition as a sculptor, knew
Longfellow and Hawthorne in Rome. Lewis' busts of Hiawatha and
Minnehanna are cooly classical, refined, and elegant, elevating the
subjects to a mythic status. William Couper treats Evangeline in
the same manner, reproducing all the details of Longfellow's
description in his marble bust of the heroine.
The objects in the small gallery speak to a fertile period of
imagination in American literature and art. The new American
nation, having won its Revolutionary War and beat back the British
again in 1812 was determined to establish a cultural identity of its
own – one that could rival European art in its polish and
sophistication, but also one which drew inspiration from American
narratives, folklore, history, and the vast and divergent landscape.
While the European sojourn became de rigeur for the wealthy and
educated 19th century Americans, at the same time, American
authors and artists were determined to forge absorb that
experience and mold it into something new and wholly American.
In Europe in the early 19th century, Neo Classicism and
Romanticism proved congruent visions, and that congruence can
be seen influencing the artists who interpreted Hawthorne's and
Longfellow's legacy. If both writers embraced more of the
Romantic with tales of dark passion, the intermingling of man and
nature, and sagas of enduring love, the visual artists who paid them
tribute were divided in their styles. Some created images infused
with the sweeping emotion and transcendent light and shade of the
narratives. Others chose to classicize the writers and their
characters in an attempt to elevate them to the realm of
universality. Both motivations contained poetic truth, for while
Hawthorne and Longfellow's poetry and fiction breathed with a
fresh, raw, Romantic bent, their skillful craftsmanship and,
especially in Longfellow's case, adherence to form, bespoke their
respect for classical principles. Perhaps it was this very confluence
of form and emotion that made Hawthorne, Longfellow, and the
artists of the American Renaissance stand at the center of the
cultural crosscurrents of the age.
Poetic Truths: Hawthorne and Longfellow and American Visual
Art is on display at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art from
February 7-July 20, 2025 www.bowdoin.edu/art-museum
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