Paintings portray minister, wife from 1822 Bangor

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BANGOR – The details of an encounter between a prominent Queen City couple and a famous American painter 184 years ago have become clearer since last month’s sale of a historic homestead in Torrington, Conn., uncovered two long-forgotten portraits.

The couple, the Rev. Harvey Loomis and his wife, Ann, moved to Bangor in 1811 from Connecticut, quickly making a name for themselves in their 14 years here. Harvey became the first minister of the newly formed First Church, which sat where All Souls Congregational Church now sits on Broadway.

Loomis was one of five Williams College students who were known as the Haystack Men.

Their goal was to spread their Christian faith in their travels.

On an August afternoon in 1806, members of the group were conducting a prayer meeting in a maple grove but got caught in a thunderstorm. They sought cover from the rain behind a large haystack. It was then that the group stressed the importance of spreading Christianity, particularly in Asia and East India. It was a pivotal moment in the history of Protestant missionary activity.

Harvey Loomis, however, believed the missionary should focus on local areas.

In 1811, he arrived as a missionary when Bangor was lacking a strong Christian ministry. The community was on the verge of becoming a powerhouse in the world lumber market, and the British attack on Hampden during the War of 1812 had yet to occur.

“He was very popular among the people in the church,” said the Rev. Dr. James Haddix, pastor of All Souls. “The city of Bangor held him in high estate.”

It was Loomis’ work, though, notably his anti-slavery preaching, that people respected, Haddix said, adding that Loomis was one of the founding board members of Bangor Theological Seminary.

While in Bangor the Loomises, like so many others who achieved a measure of success, decided to mark their status: They had their portraits painted.

Theirs were done by John Brewster Jr., a well-known American artist who painted several of Maine’s upper-class residents and their children.

Harvey Loomis died from heart complications in his Bangor church after walking there in a snowstorm three years after the portraits were done, Haddix said. To this day, the exact location of Loomis’ burial site in Mount Hope Cemetery is unknown, he said.

After her husband’s death, Ann Loomis returned to her family’s home in Torringford, Conn., now a part of Torrington, where the portraits hung until recently.

In December 2006, Harvey B. Loomis, 75, of Sagaponack, N.Y., the great-great-grandson of Ann and Harvey Loomis, made the difficult decision to sell the family homestead he had inherited from his father.

For 30 years, Loomis said, he would see the portraits from time to time, hanging in storage, but he never thought anything of them.

“To me, they were just two old primitive portraits on the wall,” he said.

In fact, the name Brewster never rang a bell.

“Not a clue,” he said about the American painter. “I’m not particularly into art.”

Still, in December, with sunlight pouring into his New York home one day, Loomis said he realized he didn’t really have a shielded spot for the portraits, so he decided to allow the Torrington Historical Society to buy them.

“It’s so rare to come across an early 19th century portrait,” said Gail Kruppa, curator at the Torrington museum. Brewster “was a wonderful portrait painter.”

The works are half-length portraits, particularly focusing on the subject’s eyes and facial expressions.

Kruppa was amazed when she first saw the portraits. They were basically glowing in a dark and cluttered room filled with other artifacts from the Loomis family, including a dusty piano.

“They really stood out,” Kruppa said. “I thought it would be wonderful to keep them in Torrington.”

Kruppa already has pieces from 19th century artists Erastus Salisbury Field and Ammi Phillips on display in the museum, but Brewster’s pieces are her favorite.

“I personally like his work better,” Kruppa said. “He was better able to capture [the Loomises] and bring them to life. They have wonderful details as well.”

One of his best-known portraits is called “One Shoe Off,” which shows a young girl holding one of her red shoes and wearing the other one. Another portrait depicts Brewster’s parents sitting in their home. Fifty of Brewster’s paintings are on display at the Portland Museum of Art.

Brewster was born in Hampton, Conn., in 1766, but spent much of his life in Maine, painting mostly in the southern part of the state. When he wasn’t traveling throughout New England completing portraits, Brewster lived in Buxton with his younger brother, Royal.

Brewster painted the Loomis images in 1822 when he was 55 years old.

Kruppa’s desire to keep the portraits in Torrington, which was the Loomises’ original home, prompted her to buy them from the family when she got a chance. She wanted her community to learn more about one of its historical families.

After she was able to identify Brewster’s signature on the backs of the paintings, the research began, and the link between Bangor and Torrington became clearer.

In this case, the artist’s style and disability – Brewster was deaf – contributed to the meaning behind the images.

Historians, interpreters and scholars concur that Brewster’s inability to hear allowed him to focus better than most on his subjects, leading to more intimate detail.

Kate Munch, an interpreter at the Bangor Interpreting Agency in Brewer, said she wasn’t familiar with deaf artists’ techniques as such but that the attention to detail discussed by art historians made sense.

Munch said one of her first lessons in college dealt with the work of deaf American cartographers.

“They were chosen because they were deaf,” Munch said.

Kruppa agreed.

“I really think there’s something to that,” she said. “He has a way of capturing people.”

The Loomis portraits by Brewster were in decent condition considering they were unframed and left in storage for years, although there appeared to be a few blemishes on the portraits, Loomis said.

In the biography “A Deaf Artist in Early America,” author Harlan Lane, a psychology and linguistics professor at Northeastern University in Boston, wrote that some of Brewster’s portraits are valued at more than $1 million.

Kruppa declined to say how much the Brewster portraits are worth but said restoration on them could begin sometime this year.

In Bangor, Haddix said he is glad to see the images surface.

“I was very excited,” he said. “We have a picture of him in the church.”

That picture, resembling Brewster’s portrait, along with a chair that Loomis used while at the church, have sat in storage at All Souls while the church has undergone renovation. Haddix said there has been discussion about dedicating a room in the church to Loomis.

“We’re moving in that direction,” Haddix said.