Our February Object of the Month is this small oil painting, a view of the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, on a winter day. The painting, which measures only about 8" by 7", depicts the snow covered inn with a figure, kneeling while putting on ice skates, on the iced-over pond in front of the inn.
The inn, which claims to be the oldest operating tavern in the United States, was immortalized in Longfellow's 1863 collection of poems Tales of a Wayside Inn. Longfellow visited the inn on October 31, 1862, recording in his journal that it appeared as "A rambling, tumble down old building, two hundred years old; and till now in the family of the Howes, who have kept an inn for one hundred and seventy five years. In the old time a house of call for all travellers from Boston westward." Longfellow had only started working on the collection of poems a few weeks earlier, writing on October 11 "A rainy day. Write a little upon “The Wayside Inn”; a beginning, only."
This painting is almost contemporary with Longfellow's related poems, having been painted in 1865, just two years after the release of Tales of a Wayside Inn. The painting did not come to the Longfellow House until 1942, when it was acquired by the poet's grandson Harry Dana. Dana purchased the painting for $10.00 from a man who claimed to have discovered it in "the attic in the oldest house in Grafton, Mass." The painting is signed by the artist, one E.A. Ellsworth, of whom we know very little.