We’re Open!

We’re Open!

😲 Look! Real people, out and about! So glad to be getting back into the swing of things!


History, Arts, and Culture Are Open for the Season!

We are back for 2021! We’ve got some AMAZING exhibitions, a wonderful gift shop, and our friendly staff and volunteers can’t wait to see you! We’re still being careful―everybody’s masked and keeping a safe distance―but we’re ready to welcome you once again to Portsmouth Historical Society!

Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center Open now, 7 days/week, 10am-5pm

Historical Walking Tours begin May 1

John Paul Jones House opens May 28


Our Gratitude to the Wyeth Foundation for American Art

Portsmouth Historical Society is pleased to announce the award of a $15,000 grant in support of our upcoming 2022 exhibition, Imagine That! The Power of Picture Books, featuring the work of more than twenty nationally-recognized author illustrators from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. With this exhibition, the Society aims to reassess the region’s heritage of illustration with fresh eyes and advance public understanding of the potential of picture books to connect and inspire us.

The primary mission of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art is to encourage the study, appreciation, and recognition of excellence in American art. The Foundation supports selected programs of scholarship, research, conservation, and exhibitions with institutions and other non-profit organizations that are consistent with this mission.


Call for Volunteers!

Portsmouth Historical Society wants YOU!

We’re looking for volunteers to help out a few hours a week. Know everything about downtown Portsmouth? Come lend a hand in the Welcome Center! Want to spend an afternoon in thoughtful discussion about historical and contemporary art? You can be a gallery docent!

If you’re interested, please email Jess Kliskey, our volunteer coordinator at Jessica@portsmouthhistory.org, or click here to fill out a quick online form.

We’re a fun bunch to work with!


Keepin’ it Classy in the Museum Shop

Frederick A. Bosley, The Family, 1930.  Oil on canvas; 41 x 48 in. Private collection. Photo, courtesy of Jeremy Fogg, Anthony Moore Painting Conservation.

The Museum Shop has beautiful note cards featuring the art of Alice Ruggles Sohier and Frederick A. Bosley. Perfect for that classy thank you card or that letter you’ve been meaning to write to your mother (she loves snail mail so much more than email). Online or in person!


History. Arts. Culture.


Spring Is Here, and Portsmouth Historical Society is Open!

Spring Is Here, and Portsmouth Historical Society is Open!

The witch hazel is blooming outside the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center! Spring has definitely arrived!

The Welcome Center is open
10 am to 5 pm
Seven days a week!

Please note that we are still following health and safety protocols, asking all visitors to wear masks and follow a one-way route through the gallery, with a maximum number of people allowed in the building. We are making great progress on vaccinations, but we want stay smart and safe!

We look forward to seeing you all!


Art ‘Round Town Friday, April 2

Twilight, Portsmouth’s Finest Hour, 1994. Reduction woodcut. Collection of Joanne Holman & Lance Hellman. Photo, courtesy of the artist.

We’ve got some wonderful artists who will be in the gallery Friday evening, April 2, between 5pm and 8pm. Among those planning on being here are Don Gorvett, whose lifetime of marvelous reduction woodcuts is on display on the second floor, as well as Betsey Wish, whose work is for sale in the shop. Her whimsical lobstermen are inspired by the real fishermen working the waters off Kittery.

From my vantage point on the water in Kittery photographing lobstermen at work, I discovered that while lobstering is difficult, it can be experienced as a particular art form. Each lobsterman has honed his skills with an individual style and technique. Bringing my homemade cookies in a dry sack while kayaking and offering them to the lobstermen I learned that each one of them has his own unique story, representing his own way of life. The real story of Kittery’s local lobstermen is one to be shared with our community.


Call for Volunteers!

Looking to spend a few hours outside the house? Like people? Interested in art? We’ve got a spot for you!

We’re looking for Welcome Center greeters and gallery docents for the sprint and summer. If you’re interested, click here, or email our volunteer coordinator Jessica Kliskey.


History. Arts. Culture.


Hard-Working Art

Hard-Working Art

Above: Don Gorvett, Bend in the River, Bow and Ceres, 2016. Reduction woodcut; 21 x 40 in. Collection of Nancy and Brian Pearson.

“Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts”

April 2, 20201–September 12, 2021

at the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center
10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, NH

Open 7 days, 10 am–5 pm

starting April 1st


“Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts” presents over sixty works by this famed seacoast master printmaker highlighting the dynamic commercial harbors of the region. Renowned for his imaginative seascapes and “boat portraits,” Gorvett’s work celebrates the mechanical and gritty alongside the serene and picturesque.

Don Gorvett, Woodbury Studio from Marginal Way, 1995. Reduction woodcut; 24 x 17.25 in. Private collection.


Don Gorvett, Twilight, Portsmouth’s Finest Hour, 1994. Reduction woodcut; 29 x 44 in. Collection of Joanne Holman & Lance Hellman.
Don Gorvett, Tug, John Wanamaker, 1998. Reduction woodcut; 30 x 32 inches. Collection of Michael & Jasmine Tullis.
Don Gorvett, Life Boat, Merchant’s Row, 2018. Reduction woodcut; 29 x 20 in. Collection of Don Gorvett Gallery.

Thank you to the lenders and donors who made this exhibition possible

Martha Fuller Clark and Geoffrey E. Clark • Pauline C. Metcalf / The Felicia Fund, Inc.

William & Arlene Brewster • Joseph MacDonald Family • New Hampshire State Council on the Arts

Anthony Moore Painting Conservation • Jameson & Priscilla French

Piscataqua Savings Bank • Cambridge Trust


Women in Portsmouth History!

Plate, probably Dover, New Hampshire, 1995. Salt-glazed stoneware with cobalt-blue decoration; diam. 11 in. Gift of Eileen Foley (2015.011).

As the inscription reads, this charming plate commemorates the selection of Eileen Foley as Portsmouth’s Citizen of the Year on Market Square Day in 1995. Helen (“Eileen”) Dondero Foley (1916-2016) was one of the most remarkable women in Portsmouth’s long history. She served as mayor for a total of sixteen years between 1968 and 1997, following in the footsteps of her mother, Mary Carey Dondero, who was elected as Portsmouth’s first female mayor in 1945. She also served seven terms in the New Hampshire Senate and was involved in a multitude of civic activities. In the words of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Eileen Foley “was not only an incredible advocate for the Seacoast Region in New Hampshire, but also around the globe by helping to establish sister cities and international trade. So much of the local progress made in e-commerce, tourism and historic preservation, can be traced back to Eileen’s leadership and foresight.”


A Small Treasure; Great Women

We’ve got some fun things in our online shop to celebrate Women’s History Month!

Check out our First Ladies Ruler, and some more of the fun finger puppets of famous females, Elizabeth I and Harriet Tubman


History. Arts. Culture.


Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts

Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts

April 2, 20201–September 12, 2021

at the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center
10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, NH

Open 7 days, 10 am–5 pm

Admission:

FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
$7.50

Portsmouth Historical Society Members
Seniors 70+
Children under 18
Active & retired military
Adults

Admission grants access to the John Paul Jones Historic House Museum at 43 Middles Street, at the galleries in the Academy Building at 10 Middle Street, and can be applied toward a discount on historical walking tours or towards an annual membership


Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts” presents over sixty works by this famed seacoast master printmaker highlighting the dynamic commercial harbors of the region. Renowned for his imaginative seascapes and “boat portraits,” Gorvett’s work celebrates the mechanical and gritty alongside the serene and picturesque.

Don Gorvett was born in Boston in 1949 and raised in Cambridge and Somerville. Much of his youth was spent at the seashore, swimming, fishing, and observing fishing-town industry. Don’s family moved to Burlington, Massachusetts, where high school art instructor Elinor Marvin discovered his talents. He received from Mrs. Marvin an extraordinary education, focused on drawing, graphic arts, and theatrical set design. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and, after graduation, moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to pursue a career in painting. With the encouragement of Elinor Marvin, and the support of Annabelle Lewis, a longtime summer resident of Ogunquit, Don began his annual summer-long painting excursions to Ogunquit, Maine. While in Gloucester, Don was introduced to Mrs. Buswell, heiress to the Jacobean-style Stillington Hall estate. She offered the rooms in the estate’s theater for the artist to live in. There Don set up his first etching press and began a series of large-scale woodcuts based on Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung. He also created a series of drypoint etchings recording the Gloucester waterfront.

This brief film by Steven Galante (sgalanteproductions.com) is an excellent peek into Don Gorvett’s creative process.

The seaside and harbors are fundamental to his work, as is his passion for history, drama, and music. His skills as a draughtsman and his understanding of the medium of printmaking are features of his bold, graphic style and the nature of his imagery. The reduction woodcut marries naturally with the maritime rusticity of New England’s harbor towns. All woodcuts are designed, cut, and editioned by Don in his studio. In 2006, Gorvett opened his first gallery with a printmaking studio in Portsmouth, now known as the Don Gorvett Gallery.

Early in 2020, Don moved his studio from Portsmouth to the Beacon Marine Basin in Gloucester. The new studio’s spacious second-floor loft at the marina also allows him to exhibit his own work and that of other nationally known artists and printmakers. Today, Gorvett’s work is in many private and public collections throughout the world.


“Artistic Encounters over the Last Thirty Years”

an evening with Don Gorvett

Join us for an evening lecture with printmaker Don Gorvett as he shares tales of life working as an artist on the Seacoast and shows us the process of creating a reduction woodcut. “Working Waterfronts,” currently on display at the Portsmouth Historical Society, is the first ever retrospective on Gorvett’s work, offers a great opportunity to see the evolution of one artist’s work, and explores the dynamic medium of the reduction woodcut.

June 17, 2021
in-person at the Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center
and virtually, via Zoom

Don Gorvett, on the front page of the Portsmouth Herald on March 24, 1991, working on his print Wentworth by the Sea

Thank you to the lenders and donors who made this exhibition possible

Martha Fuller Clark and Geoffrey E. Clark • Pauline C. Metcalf / The Felicia Fund, Inc.

William & Arlene Brewster • Joseph MacDonald Family • New Hampshire State Council on the Arts

Anthony Moore Painting Conservation • Jameson & Priscilla French

Piscataqua Savings Bank • Cambridge Trust

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Opening April 2, 2021

Opening April 2, 2021

“Twilight of American Impressionism: Alice Ruggles Sohier and Frederick A. Bosley”

“Twilight of American Impressionism” showcases the largely unsung talents of Alice Ruggles Sohier and Frederick A. Bosley, two American impressionists working at a time when realistic art was falling out of fashion and abstract art was in vogue. These two artists created works of profound quality and depth in the midst of the rapidly changing inter-war era. Their successes and failures offer insight into the difficulty of coping with rapid societal change, and their work, rarely seen in public since it was first painted, reminds us that great art, while not always trendy, stands the test of time. William Brewster, guest curator and descendant of both Sohier and Bosley, brings his unparalleled knowledge of the two artists to the project.

“Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts”

“Don Gorvett: Working Waterfronts” presents over sixty works by this famed seacoast master printmaker highlighting the dynamic commercial harbors of the region. As with the artists in “Twilight,” Don Gorvett is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Renowned for his imaginative seascapes and “boat portraits,” Gorvett’s work celebrates the mechanical and gritty alongside the serene and picturesque.


Recent Acquisition:
Portrait of Sarah H. Drisco March by John S. Blunt

Until now, the Society did not own a painting by the important local artist J.S. Blunt. At a Skinner’s online auction last November, two friends of the Society stepped up to fill that gap and helped us acquire this example. Although it is unsigned, the research of Deborah M. Child (who gave a great lecture for our 2019 “NH Folk Art” exhibition and is a John S. Blunt expert) determined that it appears in Blunt’s manuscript account book as a purchase recorded on June 30, 1821, by Nathaniel Bowditch March (1782-1862), husband of the sitter (and the artist’s landlord on Daniel Street as well).

March, a Portsmouth saddler and merchant whose papers are at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, paid $12 for this image of his wife, Sarah Huntress Drisco March (1780-1844). Her identity is given in an old label on the back that reads in script:  “Portrait of Mrs. Sarah H. March / of Portsmouth, New Hampshire / June 18 [illegible] when she was [illegible] years of age / H.P.”  Sarah would have been about 41 in 1821. PHS also has a nice trunk with Nathaniel March’s label. Sarah sports a stylish Regency hairdo with ringlets fashionable at the time, and is wearing earrings and an amazing pseudo-Elizabethan, triple-ruffled collar.

Attributed to John S. Blunt (1798-1835), Portrait of Sarah H. Drisco March, 1821. Oil on canvas; unsigned; 30 x 24 in., modern frame. Portsmouth Historical Society; Museum purchase with funds donated anonymously, 2020.


Upcycled Military Tent Bags at the Museum Shop

The crossbody bag seen here is one of many styles and sizes of these upcycled bags available at our Museum Shop. Sturdy and stylish, these purses, totes, and overnight bags are made from durable re-milled and up-cycled military textiles used by the army, covering trucks as tarps or providing shelter as tents.


History. Arts. Culture.