Visit June 3 For Art Around Town!

Visit June 3 For Art Around Town!

by | Jun 2, 2022 | News

Visit our latest exhibition for free during Art Around Town!

Come meet our featured artist Oleg Kompasov

Oleg Kompasov was born in Electrostal, Russia. He began painting at age 9 and graduated from the Electrostal Art School at age 16.

After serving in the Army, Oleg enrolled in the Moscow Architectural College specializing in environmental design. He was drawn into the advertising industry and worked his way up to creative director.

Oleg and his family have been residing in Portsmouth for over 16 years. Now he dedicates most of his time to exploring this area and painting the colorful scenery Portsmouth has to offer. Meet Oleg during Art Around Town!

History. Arts. Culture.

Captain, Celebrity, Cliché

Captain, Celebrity, Cliché

by | May 26, 2022 | Exhibitions

John Paul Jones House

May 26—October 9, 2023

In 2021, Dr. James C. Bradford and his wife, Judith, gave the Portsmouth Historical Society a collection of some three hundred “collectibles” of many diverse kinds related to John Paul Jones (1747–1792).  Most of the objects, dating from the mid to late twentieth century, reflect years of collecting such material by the donors.   Dr. Bradford, a distinguished naval historian who has edited the papers of Jones, collected these examples of modern popular culture as a sideline to his professional academic work on the eighteenth-century naval hero.  Much of the Bradford Collection will be on view this summer at the John Paul Jones House, where (according to tradition) the naval hero rented a room during his visits to Portsmouth in 1777 and 1781.

Jones, an important ship captain in the American Revolution and considered to be the founder of the U.S. Navy, was largely overlooked in the nineteenth century until his reputation was revived (and his body literally disinterred from a Paris cemetery and moved to Annapolis) in 1905.   In the plates, bowls, mugs, decanters, soda cans, medals, models, prints, posters, puzzles, and other types of memorabilia in the Bradford Collection, we can see Jones’s career recounted and his reputation perpetuated. These souvenirs reach a wider audience than academic textbooks and lengthy scholarly biographies and have help keep the memory of Jones (and some of the myths surrounding him) fresh in the collective public’s mind.

Show’n Tell Picturesound Program produced by General Electric in 1964, which retains its original record. GE produced several “Libraries” of programs featuring historical figures as well as children’s fairy tales, children’s classics, along with scientific and other subjects.

Is Jones as well known (outside of naval circles) in 2022 as he was in 1976?  Does Old Spice feature his name on their cologne any longer, as they did fifty years ago?  The Bradford Collection exhibition—displaying the kinds of everyday, decorative objects often seen by millions and collected by many—allows us to see the various ways Jones has been regarded in the popular eye for the past century. 

Advertising sign (“Today’s Best Buy / Paul Jones / Blended Whiskey / You Just Can’t Buy a Better Drink” and thermometer)
New York, ca. 1940s–50s
Tin, mixed media
The Dr. James C. and Judith R. Bradford Collection

This small metal sign, made for Paul Jones and Frankfort Distillers, is marked on the back “Place and Place, New York.”  As with the many objects in the case to the left also issued by Paul Jones Whiskey, it features an image of Jones.

The diverse materials represented in the Collection tell us a great deal about the colonial revival writ large, the American Bicentennial of the 1970s in particular, and American taste, as well as Jones’s place in the pantheon of key figures of the American Revolution in the American imagination.  Like other important Revolutionary personages, such as George Washington, Paul Revere, and Thomas Jefferson, Jones’s reputation has waxed and waned over time and been subject to reassessment.

Old Spice Deluxe Cologne Commemorative Coin Decanter featuring Jones.  Made ca. 1976 for Shulton, Inc., of Clifton, N.J., it remains unopened, with its contents of 6 fl. oz. of cologne intact and protected by its original shrink-wrapping. Old Spice issued similar packaging honoring George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

About the Donor:

Dr. James C. Bradford is professor emeritus of history at Texas A & M University, where he has taught since 1981.  He grew up in northern Michigan and received degrees from Michigan State University (B.A., M.A.) and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.  He specializes in naval, maritime, and early American history. He has taught in Malaysia and been a visiting professor at the Air War College, in addition to teaching study-abroad courses in France, Germany, Italy, and England.

An award-winning scholar, Dr. Bradford is the editor of The Papers of John Paul Jones and several volumes of essays on maritime history.  He co-edits the book series “Studies in Naval History and Sea Power” (Naval Institute Press) and was president of the North American Society for Ocean History. A founding member of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, he was executive director of the organization from 1995 to 2004. His most recent publications include A Companion to American Military History (2010), and America, Sea Power and the World (2016).

This Saturday: Meet Curious George

This Saturday: Meet Curious George

by | May 20, 2022 | News

Saturday, May 21

10am – 12pm

Join us this Saturday morning for a very special story time with Curious George himself! Hear a story, explore the exhibition, and meet George!

Free with the price of admission (and kids are always free)!

A Brief History of the John Paul Jones House

Part 6: Under New Management

Above: Portrait of Woodbury Langdon by John Singleton Copley. Oil on cavas, 1767. Image, courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art.

by J. Dennis Robinson

In March 1783, with the end of the American Revolution in sight, Sarah Purcell sold her stately home for 1,060 pounds. The new owner—merchant, lawyer, judge, and statesman Woodbury Langdon—remains a curious figure in Portsmouth history. On business in England during the start of the American Revolution, some questioned his loyalty to the patriot cause. Two years after purchasing the Purcell House, Woodbury built a three-story brick mansion next door that locals called “the costliest house anywhere about.”

His younger brother, John Langdon, built his mansion the same year a few blocks away on Pleasant Street. No one questioned the patriotism of brother John, who had built warships Ranger and America for John Paul Jones. John Langdon became the first governor of New Hampshire in 1785. Woodbury Langdon, meanwhile, was described by his contemporaries as handsome, haughty, and intelligent. Woodbury served as a justice on the NH Superior Court, but was impeached in 1790 for failing to show up for work. John Paul Jones, meanwhile, returned to Europe to collect on his war debts and served with the Russian Navy. Jones died alone in a Paris hotel in 1792 and was buried in the city’s only Protestant cemetery. Ownership of the Purcell House passed to Woodbury’s son, Henry Sherburne Langdon, in 1796, and in 1810 to his younger brother, John Langdon, Jr. Having survived all three devastating downtown Portsmouth fires, the house was conveyed by Langdon in 1821 to his wealthy brothers-in-law, Henry and Alexander Ladd. John Parrott, a Portsmouth postmaster and US Senator, occupied the house when the Ladds sold it in 1826. A century later, like so many early Portsmouth mansions, the wrecking ball loomed.

…to be continued. 

Celebrate Preservation Month with an Historical Walking Tour

May is Preservation Month, and a great way to celebrate is to take one of Portsmouth Historical Society’s Walking Tours and capture all the charm of the restored historical homes right here in Portsmouth—all the while learning a bit of history as well!

Visit our website for details and online booking or call 603.436.8433 to reserve a spot today!

Ready to Adventure with George?

The Museum Shop has the Complete Adventures of Curious George! Plus, tons of fun stuff featuring your favorite picture book characters!

 

History. Arts. Culture.

The Caterpillarmobile Stopped By!

The Caterpillarmobile Stopped By!

by | Apr 29, 2022 | News

Rachel Eskridge, associate registrar at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, made quite the entrance in the company car. She was here helping to install the works of art by Eric Carle and Ashley Bryan on loan from the ECMPBA for Imagine That!

The exhibition opens Friday, May 6 at 10 am! We will be open until 8 pm that night for Art ‘Round Town, with a small performance of the Knave of Hearts by students at Rye and Milton Elementary Schools at 6 pm.

Then, on Saturday May 7 at 10 am, we’ll be featuring a little extension of Strawbery Banke’s Baby Animals event with ducklings in the gallery, as well as original artwork from Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings!

Newburyport Bank Sponsors New Welcome Center Film

We would like to thank Newburyport Bank for being the exclusive sponsor for our new welcome center film, which will be produced over the summer and launch this fall in celebration of the Portsmouth 400th anniversary.

Jo Ann Klatskin, Senior Vice President & Non-Profit Manager of Newburyport Bank and Sue Ann Pearson, Director of Development at Portsmouth Historical Society.

Hat Tip to the Hotel Portsmouth

A big shout-out to The Hotel Portsmouth for providing accommodations for our guest speakers for our upcoming exhibition Imagine That! The Power of Picture Books. We appreciate the support from our business community and thank them!

StrathamWood Studios Delivered the Bookmaking Station to the Gallery

Roger Myers of StrathamWood Studios in front of the bookmaking station he made for Imagine That! We asked for something sturdy and functional, but what we got was a beautiful piece of woodworking. Many, many thanks!

History. Arts. Culture.

Join Us This Sunday, April 24

by | Apr 21, 2022 | News

Modern reproduction of N.C. Wyeth (1862-1948), Captain John Paul Jones (1938). Portsmouth Historical Society; The James C. and Judith R. Bradford Collection.

Sunday, April 24 • 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
John Paul Jones House • 43 Middle Street

Celebrate the anniversary of one of the most important battles of the American Revolutionary War: Captain John Paul Jones and the Ranger versus the HMS Drake in the North Channel naval duel.

 

Naval Color Guard Ceremony

Local Dignitaries & JPJ Experts

Live Music • Food & Drink

Free to the public, including admission to the John Paul Jones Historic House Museum

Imagine That! is going to be big… and we mean big!

Tim, Mike, and the whole team at Megaprint have been so helpful with getting our large-scale graphics ready for when Imagine That! opens to the public on May 6. They gave us a little behind-the-scenes glimpse at their large format printer while it was working on custom graphics made for us by illustrator Chris Van Dusen just for this show! Those purple lights are ultraviolet lamps used to dry the ink on this nearly four-foot-tall image.

We’ll Miss You, Wendy!

This past Thursday we had a goodbye lunch for Wendy Rolfe, former office manager, finance assistant, development associate, and managing director in charge of office cheerfulness. You were always upbeat, friendly, and a joy to work with, and while we know you’re moving on to new opportunities, you will be dearly missed in the office. We know we’ll see you around town, so don’t be a stranger!

 

Imagination Runs Wild at the Museum Shop

Stop by the Museum Shop and check out some of the fun and imaginative merchandise just in time for the exhibition!

History. Arts. Culture.