Background

Wallace Nutting was born on November 17, 1861, in Marlborough, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Albion and Elizabeth Sanborn (Fifield) Nutting.

Education

Wallace Nutting graduated from high school in Augusta, Maine. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, Hartford Theological Seminary (now Hartford Seminary), and Union Theological Seminary. He graduated from Harvard with the class of 1887. Wallace Nutting earned a Doctor of Divinity degree from Whitman College in 1893. He received an honorary doctor of Humanities from Washington and Jefferson College in 1938.

Career

Wallace Nutting began his career as a Congregational minister in several towns including Minneapolis, Seattle, and Providence and Fryeburg, Maine, but he was forced to retire at age 43 because of poor health.

In 1904 Wallace Nutting opened the Wallace Nutting Art Prints Studio on East 23rd Street in New York. After a year he moved his business to a farm in Southbury, Connecticut. He called this place "Nuttinghame". In 1912 he moved the photography studio to Framingham, Massachusetts, in a home he called "Nuttingholme". That year he published a catalog of prints that was 97 pages and included about 900 images.

Nutting's photographs ranged in subject and price to suit a variety of tastes. His catalog included pastoral scenes such as views of abbeys, cathedrals, bridges, mountains, flowers, and winding roads. He authored several books about the scenic beauties of New England, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

Wallace Nutting had a collection of furniture which he used as props in his "Colonial" photography. This experience led him to start a business manufacturing and selling reproduction furniture. His expertise in this field led him to author a guidebook to American Windsor furniture in 1917. By 1918 his mail-order catalog offered dozens of Windsor chairs in several historic styles.

Wallace Nutting died at his home at 24 Vernon St., Framingham, Massachusetts on Saturday, July 19, 1941, at age 79. The body was taken to Augusta, Maine for burial.

Achievements

• Wallace Nutting has been listed as a noteworthy clergyman, antiquarian by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Windsor Chairs

    (Profusely illustrated book - the first guide to understan...)

  • Furniture Treasury: Two Volumes in One, Unabriged with 5000 Illustrations

    (Wallace Nutting tells the reader where and what to collec...)

    1976

• photography

  • Exhibit in the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA. This artwork is in the public domain because it was first published in the United States before 1923. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.

  • Exhibit in the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA. This artwork is in the public domain because it was first published in the United States before 1923. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.

  • photography

  • photography

  • photography

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Wallace Nutting suffered from neurasthenia and turned to bicycle as a means of relaxation and improving his health.

Connections

On June 5, 1888, Wallace Nutting married Mariet Griswold in Buckland, Massachusetts. They had no children.

Father:

Albion Nutting

Albion Nutting was killed in the Civil War.

Mother:

Elizabeth Sanborn (Fifield) Nutting

Spouse:

Mariet Griswold

(m. June 5, 1888)

References

• Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America Thomas Andrew Denenberg describes Nutting's interrelated endeavors, from his varied writings (including Furniture of the Pilgrim Century and the monumental three-volume Furniture Treasury) to his photography (both amateur and professional), chain of restored museum houses, renowned collection of seventeenth-century furniture, reproduction colonial furniture business, and advertising program. By charting Nutting's activities, Denenberg creates a picture of an influential cultural critic who deftly combined myth and materialism, contributing significantly to both the growth of consumerism and the development of an antimodern worldview in the twentieth-century United States.
  2003
• Collector's Guide to Wallace Nutting Pictures: Identification & Values Collector's Guide to Wallace Nutting Pictures contains the most complete and current Wallace Nutting price guide, featuring not only the rare, expensive prints but also the many common popular images. Hundreds of photos aid in identification and special chapters are devoted to grading and rating prints, recognizing authentic Nutting signatures, collecting other memorabilia, as well as identifying fakes.
  1997
• Collector's Guide to Wallace Nutting Furniture This book will provide you with the story and history of Wallace Nutting furniture, including how to differentiate lower quality pieces from Nutting's best and most collectible work, what types of furniture he reproduced and why it is so collectible today, ways to identify signed and unsigned pieces, how to distinguish reproductions from the original period antiques, and it even includes a numerical furniture grading system for evaluating the condition.
  2001
• New England's Architecture (Schiffer Book) Popular artist Wallace nutting traveled throughout New England and the United States giving lectures as a minister, photographer, author, furniture maker, collector, and antiquarian. Nutting's interior and exterior images of historic buildings, homes, and garden structures throughout the New England states are portrayed within these pages. In addition to beautiful exterior profiles, Nutting's explorations reveal staircases, fireplaces, entryways, furnished sitting rooms, and even bed-chambers.
  2007