Morning View of Blue Hill Village
Jonathan Fisher Memorial, Inc.
by Tim Garrity
The Reverend Jonathan Fisher's "Morning in Blue Hill Village, Sept. 1824" is one of Maine's oldest landscape paintings. Fisher used the latest technology - the camera obscura - to create an image that is photographic in its accuracy. Today, we can examine the image using modern Global Information Systems (GIS) technology.
Blue Hill Landscape, circa 1910
By the turn of the century, there were many more houses in Blue Hill, but the landscape remained largely cleared of trees, providing magnificent sea views for the newly arrived rusticators.
Blue Hill Landscape, 2009
By 2009, a new generation of trees, along with many new houses, had completely altered our view of the landscape.
We can look at Rev. Fisher's painting in many different ways:
Literally – in its accurate rendering of buildings and landscape features, a view that encompasses busy harbor and prosperous village, surrounded by farms at harvest time.
Figuratively – in its depiction of an Edenic place made secure for the sunbonneted women on the left, as the male figure in the foreground drives a snake from the yard.
Historically – in its dynamic view of a coastal market town emerging from the frontier. Tree stumps are yet to be cleared from the field beyond the stone wall. A ship enters the harbor, while three other ships are under construction.
Click on the images to the right for a closer look.
