Art: Stout Houses

Recognizing, like the Metropolitan Museum of Manhattan, the compact, grainy beauty of the homes of colonial merchants, militiamen, farmers, Indian fighters, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently began an American Wing. It has removed ten rooms from ten stout New England Houses, among them:

Elizabeth Derby’s House, Peabody, Mass.—a fine example of the early Federal period. Over the mantel in the living room are two pictures of New England village life, done by that forgotten but once fashionable Italian, Corne of Naples. The first is called Saturday Night; the second, Sunday Morning.

George Jaffrey Jr.’s House—the first 18th Century mansion ever built of wood in Portsmouth, N. H. Its owner was graduated from Harvard in 1702.

Samuel Colton’s House, Longmeadow, Mass.—”the finest mansion in town,” built in 1755. The Museum has secured its fine front doorway, for which Merchant Colton paid, he records, £29.