The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 2004
by Douglass Shand-Tucci
Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA
Martin Mower (August 11, 1870 - August 24, 1960) was born on August 11, 1870, in Lynn, Essex, Massachusetts, as a descendant of one of the founding families of Lynn, and he graduated from Lynn schools. He earned his degree from Harvard University in the Class of 1894. Joining the faculty of the Cambridge university that same year, he served as an instructor in fine arts and architecture and later became a lecturer in fine arts. As an American male artist, Mower worked as an impressionist and post-impressionist painter in oils, watercolors, and pastels.
Mower's artistic and professional circles connected him to a prominent cultural cohort. He was part of a circle that included Thomas Whittemore, a friend of Henri Matisse and Isabella Stewart Gardner who famously gave Gardner the first Matisse to enter an American museum in 1912. Gardner subsequently gave the superb high-altar reredos designed by Ralph Adams Cram for Cowley to St. John’s, Bowdoin Street, featuring an altarpiece painted by Martin Mower. This network of Harvard graduates and cultural figures was described by Lincoln Kirstein as distinctly "high-bohemian."
Throughout his career, Mower's artwork was exhibited in notable venues. His work was featured on display in Mrs. Jack Gardner's Fenway Court Museum, and in 1927, he was given an exhibition at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. Among his best-known area paintings is "Class Day at Harvard." His verified exhibitions also include a showing titled Martin Mower: Paintings at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1917.
In his personal life, Mower was married twice, with his second wife named Grace. After living in Vancouver, British Columbia, since 1951 with his daughter, Mrs. Ronald Brooke Irvine, and leaving behind a stepson, Charles B. Hall of Concord and Rockport, Mower passed away on August 24, 1960, at the age of 90. Following his death in Vancouver, his burial took place at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
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The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture Paperback – Illustrated, June 1, 2004 by Douglass Shand-Tucci |
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