Murals on walls of Maine home
Fred Field for The Boston Globe
Members of the Porter School of Landscape Mural Painting, as Porter and his disciples became known, were itinerant artists who often did their best (if largely unsigned) work behind closed doors, creating interior land- and seascapes that brightened many a bleak New England winter. To art historians, their murals, largely found in western Maine and Massachusetts, represent a trend in 19th Century home decoration closely aligned with the spirit of American self-reliance espoused by Emerson and Thoreau.

