Mount Monadnock Archives - New England Historical Society

Marian MacDowell was a 50-year-old woman tending a sick husband in 1907 when she founded the New Hampshire institution that nurtured some of America’s greatest composers, writers and artists.

Edward MacDowell and Marian MacDowell.

Two tragedies sent her on the path to starting the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H. One, the death of her mother; the other, the death of her husband, four decades later.

Marian MacDowell

Marian Griswold Nevins was born in New York City on Nov. 22, 1857, the third of Cornelia and David Nevins’ five children. Her father was a successful Wall Street banker. Her mother died when she was eight — and her father was away. The doctor and her grandmother made her give her father the news. She recalled,

I heard the carriage come up to the front door and then they all looked at each other with consternation; neither one could dare to go out and meet him… knowing the very strong affection my father had for me, they pushed me out into the hall and said, “You have got to tell Father Mother is dead.” He came in, looked at me and said, “What is the matter?” I said, “Mother is dead,” and he fell as though he had been knocked over the head with a heavy blow.

David Nevins sent the children to live with two aunts, Lucretia and Caroline Perkins, in Waterford, Conn. Caroline, who taught music, recognized Marian’s musical talent and encouraged her to pursue the piano.

he 1910 Peterborough Pageant used MacDowell’s music to dramatize the history of Peterborough, N.H., set on the grounds of the MacDowell Colony. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Choices

In 1880, 23-year-old Marian Nevins sailed to Europe – where all serious American musicians studied — to train with Clara Schumann. Schumann wasn’t available, however, and Marian studied instead with a young American composer, Edward MacDowell. Three years later, he asked her to marry him. She agreed on one condition: That he would devote his life to composing and live off her savings. They were married in 1884 in Waterford.

The young couple eventually settled in Boston, which gave MacDowell membership in the group of New England classical music composers known as the Boston Six. Three months into the marriage, Marian MacDowell realized she had to choose between her husband’s career and her own. She chose his. (Listen to MacDowell’s piece To A Wild Rose from Woodland Sketches here.)

Quiet

Leonard Bernstein at the MacDowell Colony.

Realizing he needed a quiet place to work, she bought Hillcrest, an abandoned farm in Peterborough, N.H., in 1896, without consulting him. She telegraphed the news to him and he replied, “All right, in your name, your responsibility.”

Nevertheless, he loved Hillcrest. Marian surprised him after their first summer by having a log cabin built with a view of Mount Monadnock. It was a perfect place for him to compose, and he wrote most of his significant piano works from it. (Listen to From A Log Cabin here.) She would leave his lunch in a wicker basket and leave it on his doorstep so he could work undisturbed – a tradition that continues to this day at the art colony.

Edward MacDowell had taught music at Columbia University since 1896, but in 1904 he quit his job during an academic dispute. Soon afterward he was hit by a Hansom cab and he went into a severe mental decline. A friend said, “His mind became as that of a little child. He sat quietly, day after day, in a chair by a window, smiling patiently from time to time at those about him, turning the pages of a book of fairy tales…”

Even as they relied on friends for financial support, Marian MacDowell began to realize their dream of a summer colony where artists could find inspiration in quiet and solitude. In 1907, she deeded their farm to the Edward MacDowell Association and founded the MacDowell Colony. During that first season, the guests were sisters Helen Farnsworth Mears, a sculptor, and Mary Mears, a writer.

The MacDowell Colony

Marian MacDowell near the log cabin studio. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Edward MacDowell died on Jan. 23, 1908. Marian MacDowell was 50 years old, but she would remain involved with the art colony for the next 48 years. She resumed her career as a pianist and went on the road to raise money, visiting 600 cities in a 15-year period. Again, at the age of 73, she embarked on a concert tour to raise money in the United States and Canada.

Over time the colony expanded and produced a considerable body of work.

Fellows

An estimated 6,000 artists have been supported in residence, including the winners of at least 61 Pulitzer Prizes.

Fellows included Leonard Bernstein, who wrote MASS while there, and Amy Beach; poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; painter Lilla Cabot Perry; novelists Willa Cather, James Baldwin and Spalding Gray; and playwright Thornton Wilder, who was inspired by nearby Peterborough to write Our Town. L. M. Kit Carson wrote The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 while at the MacDowell Colony, and Michael Chabon worked on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

In 1946, on her 89^th birthday, Marian MacDowell resigned her job as head of the MacDowell Colony but continued on as ‘corresponding secretary.’ On her 96^th birthday, the Town of Peterborough sent her a cake with the message ‘To Marian MacDowell, Peterborough’s First Citizen, Beloved by All New Hampshire.’ It was the last year she managed to come to the Colony. She died three months shy of her 99^th birthday, on Aug. 23, 1956.

She summed up her achievements simply: “I am a very ordinary woman who had an opportunity—and I seized it.”

This story was updated in 2021.

Abbott Handerson Thayer described himself as “bird-crazy” as a boy, pictured here in 1861. As an adult, he won fame for his angel paintings, popular with art collectors.

The bird-crazy boy

He was born on Aug. 12, 1849 in Boston, the son of a country doctor. He grew up near Keene, N.H., at the foot of Mount Monadnock, which he also painted to acclaim. Sometimes he painted an angel hovering over the mountain. It symbolized his efforts — ultimately successful — to protect the mountain from development.

He studied art in Boston and Brooklyn, N.Y., where he met his wife, Kate Bloede. They married and moved to Paris in 1875, where he studied with the École des Beaux-Arts for four years. He painted Landscape at Fountainbleu Forest, below, in France in 1876.

He and Kate returned to New York City and he shared a studio with Daniel Chester French. In the early 1880s, two of his small children died within a year of each other. Their deaths devastated Thayer and his wife. Thayer painted this angel, modeled by his 11-year-old daughter Mary, when his wife began to show signs of mental illness.

During the 1880s, Thayer’s reputation grew and he had more commissions than he could handle — including portraits of Mark Twain and Henry James. He often painted his three children, Mary, Gladys and Gerald.

His wife fell into an irreversible depression. She was then committed to an asylum, where she died in 1891. Thayer married Emma Buckingham Beach and they settled permanently in Dublin, N.H., in 1901.

The Pendulum of Abbott Thayer Handerson

Thayer himself suffered from bipolar disorder. He described the illness as “the Abbott pendulum,” by which his emotions careened between “all-wellity” and “sick disgust.” He had panic attacks and suicidal thoughts so bad he wasn’t allowed to go out by himself in his boat on Dublin Pond.

Thayer was opinionated and eccentric. He and his family slept outdoors year round to take advantage of fresh air.

Thayer had a strong interest in camouflage, which he developed as a boy observing animals’ protective coloration. Later in his life he wrote books on camouflage and tried to interest the military in his ideas. He is credited with being the first to write about disruptive patterning (he called it ‘razzle-dazzle’), which breaks up an animal’s outlines; about masquerade, as when a creature mimics something in its environment. He also discovered countershading, such as the white undersides of animals that make them seem less round and less solid.

He became obsessed with the idea that all animals are camouflaged. Theodore Roosevelt mocked that hypothesis in a long paper, which contributed to Thayer’s “sick disgust” and panic attacks. Eventually, however, the U.S. military accepted his proposal for countershading naval vessels.

By 1918, the loss of young men to the influenza epidemic and to World War I affected him profoundly. That sadness informs this 1918 painting, Boy and Angel.

Thayer died at home on May 29, 1921. To see an online exhibition of his works, click here.

This story last updated in 2022.

Mount Monadnock

Marian MacDowell Founds the MacDowell Colony