October’s object is a painting of a stand of trees displaying fall foliage. The trees are flanked by farmhouses in the background, and in the foreground is a fenced field with a pair of cows. The artist is Thomas Gold Appleton, brother-in-law to Henry W. Longfellow.
Appleton, born in 1812 and often referred to as “Tom” by his family, was a lifelong passionate lover of art. Early in life he aspired to become a professional artist, but eventually realized he lacked the aptitude for that vocation. In a July 1844 letter to his father Appleton wrote “You know as well as I do, that my life, the life of an artist (and how alone am I, ashamed of the name) counts for nothing in this country... Do you suppose... I am fool enough to call myself a painter or a poet? The short and long of it is, that I have not any of the kind of talent needful to success here. It is a melancholy confession but true.”
Appleton did make a name for himself as a patron of the arts. He used his portion of the Appleton family fortune to purchase works of art, promote artists in whom he saw talent, and fund institutions devoted to collecting and displaying art. In 1870 he became a member of the first board of trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to which he donated an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, and ancient Greek and Roman artifacts. After Appleton’s death in 1884, The Atlantic Monthly published a eulogy written by his good friend Oliver Wendell Holmes that described Tom’s impact on the art world, “As a patron of art he was discriminating and generous. As an amateur artist he had taste and skill enough to make his pleasing sketches and painted pebbles an ornament to his own walls and tables, and welcome gifts to the friends for whom he was glad to employ his pencil and palette.”
Despite never attaining his dream of being an acclaimed artist, Appleton continued to paint throughout his life. Landscapes and portraits of family members were two of his most common subjects, and many of these ended up in the collections of the Longfellow House as gifts and bequests to various family members. Appleton’s sister Fanny Longfellow wrote to a friend in 1849 that “a very lovely landscape” painted by her brother had been sent to her for display in the Brattle Street home. On October 15, 1855, Henry Longfellow recorded in his journal “Delicious weather. Tom came out to paint the trees on Worcester’s island, which he did very successfully.”
How and when this painting came to the house is unknown, but a good guess is that it was one of the five landscapes by Appleton that he left to his niece Alice upon his death. Labels on the back of the frame and painting supports give Alice’s name and address. By 1912, this painting was hanging in the stairway of the house’s central hall, where it is displayed today.