Charles Henry Granger 1812 - 1893

Charles Henry Granger 1812 - 1893. Saco Museum Main Street Walk. , Charles Henry Granter (1812 - 1893) was an artist, musician, poet, translator, historian, outdoorsman and environmentalist. He was born in Saco as the son of Saco Collector of Customs Daniel Granter and Mary Jordan, daughter of Tristam Jordan, one of Saco's wealthiest merchants. Charles Henry attended Thornton Academy from 1822 to 1828 and West Point from 1828 to 1832., [Unreadable] portrait studio in Saco in 1833 where he worked as an itenerant artist traveling to New York in [unreadable], Philadelphia, 1839, Baltimore, 1839-40, Frederick, MD 1840, and Washington, DC and New York [unreadable], Eastport, 1842, Boston, 1843-44, Kennebunk, 1845, and Boston 1856, and 1858. He was a regular exhibitor of painting, drawing and sculpture of at the York County Fair, frequently receiving the highest awards for artwork. In the 1860s, the City of Saco commissioned Granger [unreadable] patriotic portrait to adorn the wals of City Hall. [Unreadable] portraits of Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Governor [unreadable], and Judge Ether Shepley [unreadable]. One of Granger's fine portrait [unreadable] String-Bean Muster, also [unreadable] in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, and some [unreadable] graphite, pen, crayon, watercolor, and plaster [unreadable] Museum, which the artist helped found in [unreadable]., [....], His diaries provide a rare insight into the professional life of a mid-19th century painter. A portion of Granger's income was derived from commissions to paint portaits of the recently dead. Granger found the work distasteful and in 1848 placed an ad:,

Please read this!! The subscriber is frequently called upon to paint portraits from persons after death. Now this subjects him not only to an extremely disagreeable taste out to risk the failure in producing a satisfactory resemblance. Hitherto he has… gone into the rooms of the dead and dying without any regard to the disease, whether contagious or not… He would therefore respectfully request the public, if they will not come themselves and send their friends while alive and in health that they will at least refrain from making his eart, instead of a pleasing and delightful occupation to one or pain and, too often of discust, by requiring him to look upon the ghastly and distorted features of the dead…

Granger's connections to the prominent Jordan family sparked his interest in local history and he contributed material to the family genealogy published in 1882. In 1866, he joined with the [unreadable] Professor John Johnson, George [unreadable], Stephen Goddale [undreadable], George A. Emery, John [unreadable], and old associate, Marcus Watson, in founding the York [unreadable] Saco Museum. He contributed natural [unreadable] in his hunting trips and donated most [unreadable] as well as his own drawings as artowrks. He served in the hsitorical and scientific community as a frequent leturer. In 1874 the museum commissioned Granger [unreadable] portrait for John James Audubon to compliment the many [unreadable] birds and natural specimens., Despite his many talents, Granger struggled to make a living producing art and music in an industrious New England town, whose citizens were preocupied with producing cotton cloth and [unreadable] lumber. He spent much of his adult life in a modest [unreadable] on Summer Street. Charles Granger died in 1893 and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery.