Cleveland Museum of Art

A Builder of Boats

John George Brown

Date

c. 1904

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

America, late 19th-early 20th Century

Department

American Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Brown's preference for rural subjects in a time when the United States was undergoing rapid industrialization suggests nostalgia for the past. Indeed, A Builder of Boats, an image of an elderly craftsman working alone with hand tools in a tranquil setting replete with his sleeping dog, offered its contemporary audience a distinct alternative to mechanized factory production. The object held in the sitter’s right hand is a drawing compass.

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