Maine Antique Digest, April 2017

Maine Antique Digest, April 2017 37-E

FEATURE -

37-E

be purchased for mounting on folding screens.

The

complete

Prelude

retailed for between $700 and $850.

(By comparison, many antique scenic wallpapers fetched

between $10,000 and $15,000.) Curiously, there are no

known examples of the panorama ever being installed

permanently in New York.

The only complete

Prelude

panorama extant survives

in the 1780s John Brown House in Providence, Rhode

Island (fig. 7). John Nicholas Brown, John Brown’s

great-great-grandnephew, purchased the panorama for a

dining room added by previous owner Marsden Perry. The

scenic paper was installed by the summer of 1936, when

Brown opened the house for public tours in celebration of

the state’s tercentenary. He later

donated the house to the Rhode

Island Historical Society, which

uses the room as a gallery inter-

preting the Revolutionary War.

McClelland easily could have

provided an antique or repro-

duction scenic paper for the

John Brown House (examples

survive in nearby 18th-century

houses), but her new Washing-

ton design provided an engaging

link between the present and the

past. The inauguration theme

seemed to invoke the spirit of

the original owner, John Brown,

who deeply admired Washing-

ton and even entertained him

in Providence. John Nicholas

Brown also bought reproduc-

tion patterns from McClelland

for other rooms in the house, as

well as for his own home across

the street, the 1792 Nightin-

gale-Brown House.

A few years later New York

celebrated the sesquicentennial

of Washington’s inauguration

as the opening day theme of

the 1939 World’s Fair. McClel-

land’s

Prelude

panorama was

exhibited again, marking con-

tinued interest in the subject and

renewed popularity of scenic

wallpapers.

It was, as described

by the

NewYork Times

, a “highly

decorative wall covering

and

interesting historical record.”

By this time she had sold all the

six sets originally produced by

Engler, so she commissioned

a seventh hand-painted set in

France for exhibition.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art considered

The

Prelude to a Nation

of sufficient merit to invite McClel-

land to lecture on its scenes and sources. For decades

the museum library preserved lantern slides and detailed

descriptions of each scenic panel. In 1942 the Metropol-

itan Museum of Art safeguarded the final French version

of McClelland’s panorama, along with her entire collec-

tion of antique wallpapers, “to be held for the duration

[of World War II] in their depository one hundred miles

outside of NewYork. They offered to take these treasures

for us,” McClelland wrote at the time, “and take care of

them in their steel and concrete building [Whitemarsh

Hall, the 1916-21 house Horace Trumbauer built for

Edward Stotesbury in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania], since

they knew they could never be replaced if anything hap-

pened to them.”

The fate of this set is unknown.

Nancy McClelland believed ardently that antiques

and well-crafted reproductions held aesthetic, academic,

and even

popular

appeal. In her capable hands, they did

indeed.

The author is the curator at Boscobel House and

Gardens, Garrison, New York, and an adjunct pro-

fessor at SUNY New Paltz.

1. “Costumes Adhere to Colonial Style,”

New York

Times

, January 23, 1932.

2. “Beaux Arts Ball to be Held Tonight,”

New York

Times

, January 22, 1932.

3. “Beaux Arts Ball to be Held Tonight,”

New York

Times

4. “Wall Papers Redivivus,”

The Upholsterer and

Interior Decorator

, April 13, 1931, p. 126.

5. American Art Association Anderson Galleries, Inc.

“French Furniture” auction catalog, sale 2003,

December 2 and 3, 1932, p. 54.

6. Nancy McClelland, “The Paper Itself,” unpublished

notes, Nancy McClelland Papers, Cooper-Hewitt,

Smithsonian Design Museum. My deepest thanks

to curator Greg Herringshaw for his generosity

in sharing this archive and his equally invaluable

insights.

7. McClelland, “The Paper Itself.”

8. Engler’s studio appears to have

employed Gant

Gaither, who worked as a set painter before

embarking on better-known careers as a show

business mogul and product designer.

9. American Art Association Anderson Galleries, Inc.

“French Furniture” auction catalog, sale 2003,

December 2 and 3, 1932, p. 54.

10. Anna Coyle, “Some New Motifs on Wall Paper,”

The [

Brooklyn

]

Eagle Magazine

, September 17,

1933.

11. A partial set was recently removed from a house in

Newport, Rhode Island, and another survives in a

house in Cleveland, Ohio.

12. Walter Rendell Storey,

“Scenic Wallpapers,”

New

York Times

, June 18, 1939.

13.

NancyMcClelland toMrs.Walter Brown,August 3,

1942, curatorial files of the Rhode Island Historical

Society. Many thanks to Kirsten Hammerstrom for

tracking down this letter.

Figure 5. Nancy McClelland, detail of

The Prelude to a Nation: The Story of Washington

, circa

1932, hand-stenciled wallpaper. Courtesy Rhode Island Historical Society.

Figure 4. Nancy McClelland, detail of

The Prelude to a Nation: The Story of Washington

, circa

1932, hand-stenciled wallpaper. Courtesy Rhode Island Historical Society.

Figure 6.

Federal Hall, New York, the Seat

of Congress

, 1790, colored engraving,

by engraver and printer Amos Doolittle

(1754-1832) after Pierre (Peter) Lacour

(French, 1745-1814), Library of Congress.

McClelland may have studied this engraving

or a photogravure of it commissioned by the

Society of Iconophiles in 1903.

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