By Catherine Cyr, Class of 2022
Tucked away in a storage box at the Winterthur Museum lies a lithograph depicting a picturesque view of one of New England’s celebrated small colleges. Produced by the Thomas Moore Lithography Studio in Boston, Massachusetts between 1836 and 1837, the print features a view of a college campus consisting of multiple buildings. Small figures dot the landscape, reminding the viewer of the campus’s human presence, while the large trees and vegetation in the foreground suggest that the current scene has transformed a once rural area. This idyllic scene is not an original image created by Moore’s studio, but rather a reproduction of a painting by Esteria Butler (1814-1891) titled “View of Waterville College,” ca. 1836-1837.