More on the State House, Boston source print
Image courtesy Historic New England
In 1897 the Boston clothing company Macullar, Parker and Company commissioned Minton to create a unique commemorative tile for souvenir sales in their store, shown here. They chose a version of the Boston State House image which closely resembles the work of early nineteenth-century wood engravers. It bears the inscription "State House Boston 1818" and contains almost all of the design elements present in the Rogers version of the scene: the three cows, the boy and wheelbarrow, and the family in the distance. Exhaustive searches of every known publication, circular, book, magazine, newspaper, map, and other ephemera printed with American scenes failed to turn up an early source for this image. There are no known images of the State House that date to 1818, despite numerous versions done by Bowen, Pendleton's, Fenner & Sears, and other engravers and printing firms. The location of this source print remains an intriguing mystery.
For additional reading on this image, see
Homer Eaton Keyes, "The Boston State House in Blue Staffordshire" Antiques (March, 1922), 115-120
Gregor Norman-Wilcox, "Staffordshire Views of the Boston State House" Antiques v. 20 (Dec., 1931), 363-366