by Paul H. Mills

From time to time, Maine State Museum Art Curator Deanna Bonner-Gantner fields complaints about placement of State House portraits. One was from a senator, who asked that the portrait of Maine native William Phips, who, as the first royal governor of Massachusetts, ended the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692, be moved.

“He looks like he’s looking right at me,” the senator said. “Can’t we move it a little and change the position of it?”

Gov. Phips is one of 143 portraits that spook the State House these days. Though with last month’s news that the portrait of actor Arba Powers was being donated to the Houlton Historical Society, there’s still plenty to keep Phips and others from becoming too lonely.

The state’s turning over – the technical expression being “deaccessioning” – of the Powers portrait was the first occasion in modern times when the state voluntarily relinquished a portrait. It has also provoked interest in whether there are others that should meet a similar fate.

Only four women have State House portraits. Besides Margaret Chase Smith, they are opera singer Lillian Nordica and the wives of 19th-century Maine governors William King and Samuel Smith.

Bonner-Gartner suggests Nordica could be deaccessioned, but only if another of Nordica is substituted.

“She’s in the role of Isolde in Wagner’s opera,” says Bonner-Gartner about the current Nordica. “It’s a very suggestive pose, that with today’s eyes you’d look at it and say, ‘What is that portrait doing on the State House walls?’ It’s more like an illustration rather than a true portrait.”

Besides looking for a better Nordica portrait, Bonner-Gantner is also searching for portraits of nine Maine governors of whom none have been found. They include the legendary Edward Kent, whose “hell bent for Governor Kent” triumph over incumbent Democratic Gov. John Fairfield in 1840 gave rise to the expression “As Maine Goes, So Goes the Nation” because his September victory foreshadowed the national election of fellow Whig William “Tippecanoe” Harrison two months later.

Bonner-Gantner’s other recent interests include the re-surfacing of old portraits of Maine’s first governor, William King, including one loaned to the state in 2001 from the late Peter French, a disabled Vietnam veteran who lived many years in Kingfield (which was named for King).

French had acquired the portrait from a childhood neighbor, Stella Aiken, in his southern Connecticut hometown. He had first observed it in 1947, at age seven. Then, during a nostalgic visit to Aiken’s home in the 1980s, French was driving away when he “noticed in the rearview mirror she was motioning to call me back. She told me to retrieve the portrait [by then] stored against the wall in the cellar, and that it was mine and I should take it back to Maine.”

French didn’t know how Aiken had come upon the painting, which she attributed to the celebrated 19th-century portrait artist Gilbert Stuart. Research by French and Bonner-Gantner found the painting had been displayed in the Hall of Flags in the State House for more than 30 years during in the 19th century.

Aiken’s grandfather, Frazier Gilman, had retrieved the painting in 1891 after a seven-year battle with Maine officials, during which Gilman established his mother – a niece of Gov. King’s widow – had loaned, rather than given, the portrait to the state in 1860. A noted Stuart scholar now believes the King portrait is likely the work of another renowned artist, Chester Harding.

The most popular State House portraits include Mt. Katahdin benefactor Gov. Percival Baxter and his dog Garry and Gen. Joshua Chamberlan, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg.

In 2000, when the State House underwent remodeling, the painting collection was appraised. Atop the list was Charles Codman’s “View of the Original State House” from 1836, which was valued at more than $125,000. Two 1806 Stuart portraits of Gov. William and Ann King, given to the state in 1951 by relatives of the couple, were collectively valued at $153,000.

Ronald Frontin’s 1996 rendition of Gov. John McKernan was valued at $32,000, while Baxter and Garry was valued at $22,000. A portrait of Baxter’s controversial successor, Owen Brewster, a villain played by Alan Alda in a 2004 film about Howard Hughes, appraised at $9,900.

But dollars alone cannot value what these images mean to Maine’s heritage.

As Bonner-Gantner observes, “A photograph can’t do it. A portrait sets aside this figure from other images of this subject. You can almost communicate with the portrait, you can take your time to be with that person.”

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: [email protected].