On View in the Gallery: Selected Portraits from the Special Collections’ Art Collection
Main Library Art Gallery
December 2022
The Concord Free Public Library is home to a unique art collection that emphasizes Concord, Massachusetts's history, people, and culture. From its founding in 1873, art has had a special place within the Library. The Library immediately began taking in the art upon opening the doors with art pieces like David Scott's Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Chester French's bust of Simon Brown, and William James Stillman's The Philosophers' Camp in the Adirondacks. Today, The William Munroe Special Collections holds over 200 pieces of art, including sculptures, paintings, and lithographs. From portraits of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott to visions of Concord's buildings, byways, and bridges, Special Collections has much to discover. We invite you to view images of the entire collection HERE.
For the remainder of this month, in the Gallery on the second floor of the Main Library, we are featuring a selection of portraits from the collection, including some that have not been on public view for some time including works by Ethan Allen Greenwood, Charles Hovey Pepper, Stacy Tolman, and Mary Colman Wheeler.
For centuries, the only way one could capture a person's likeness was through a portrait. Whether a drawing or painting, before the advent of the photograph, a portrait could memorialize a person for posterity. While complete realism is a more recent concept, a portrait would often be a flattering representation, which showed the inner essence of the subject, and provide a glimpse of a person's character. For a long time, portraits remained the domain of the wealthy and powerful. Many of the portraits in Special Collections are of male town leaders as well as historically powerful men. While there are multiple portraits of women in our collection, many of them are unnamed.
