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Mill Town Memories: The Drawings and Watercolors of Marian Cannon Schlesinger
Amoskeag Mills, Housing No. 2, Manchester, NH.
Worker's houses were constructed by the Amoskeag Manufacturing
Company, adjacent to Manchester Mill No. 2. |
Mill Town Memories: The Drawings and Watercolors of Marian Cannon Schlesinger was on view at the
Society's museum from June 14, 2008, through May 3, 2009.
The landscape of New England is ever changing, constantly reshaped by natural and human forces. Beginning in
the early nineteenth century the textile industry transformed New England, as enterprising investors dammed
rivers, built mills, created villages, attracted workers, and supplied textiles to the world. As mill towns
grew up across New England they became a prominent feature of the landscape of the region, like its
mountains, forests, harbors, and seashore. At the same time the region’s mill towns also became the
birthplace of industrialization in America, feeding the marketplace and fueling the economy for more
than a century.
Marian Cannon Schlesinger is a landscape and portrait painter, as well as author and illustrator of
children’s books. A contributor to newspapers and magazines, Ms. Schlesinger is also the author and
illustrator of Snatched from Oblivion: A Cambridge Memoir. Born in Franklin, New Hampshire, she
was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father, Walter Cannon, was a Professor of Physiology at
Harvard University. After graduating from Radcliffe College, as an aspiring artist, she studied art in
China for a year. Ms. Schlesinger’s work has been exhibited at the Boston Public Library, the Boston
Museum of Science, the Museum of American Textile History, and the Octagon House in Washington, D.C.
As a child, Marian Cannon Schlesinger watched the mills pass the window of the car as she accompanied her
family to their summer home in Franklin, New Hampshire. Inspired by a course about the American landscape taken
at Harvard University, in 1973 Ms. Schlesinger began to create a series of watercolors and drawings of
textile mills across New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Spending several spring and autumn seasons traveling the
countryside, she looked at the mills with new appreciation. Taking notes in the field, the artist returned
to her home in Cambridge to create the watercolors. These works show the influence of her artistic
training in China, while also reflecting a nineteenth century approach to artistic rendering. Intimate
views of mill towns, the scenes are enveloped in mists of color, echoing the smoke of the furnaces and the
rich red-brown of the brick, softening the quality of the line drawings.
Artist Marian Cannon Schlesinger created views of 27 mill towns that grew up on the inland
rivers and streams across New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts, as they appeared during the
1970s and 1980s. The exhibition featured 56 atmospheric drawings and watercolors arranged alphabetically by community name capture New England
mill communities during a period of change, as the textile industry was declining and mills were beginning
to disappear from the landscape. These unique drawings and watercolors were selected from a
collection of 83 works presented to the New Hampshire Historical Society as a promised
gift by the artist.
Online Exhibition
See all of the works featured in Mill Town Memories through our online exhibition.
Thanks to Our Sponsors
Mill Town Memories: The Drawings and Watercolors of Marian Cannon Schlesinger was sponsored by Public Service of New Hampshire and RiverStone Resources LLC.
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