Wallace Nutting
Wallace Nutting (November 17, 1861 – July 19, 1941) was an American minister, photographer, artist, and antiquarian, who is most famous for his landscape photos of New England. He also was an accomplished author, lecturer, furniture maker, antiques expert and collector. His atmospheric photographs helped spur the Colonial Revival style.
He was born in Rock Bottom, Massachusetts (a village straddling Stow and Hudson), on Sunday, November 17, 1861, the second child of Albion and Elizabeth Nutting. His father was killed in the Civil War. Wallace Nutting graduated from high school in Augusta, Maine. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, Hartford Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary. He graduated from Harvard with the class of 1887. Nutting earned a Doctor of Divinity degree from Whitman College in 1893. He received an honorary doctor of Humanities from Washington & Jefferson College in 1938.
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. He suffered from neurasthenia, and turned to bicycling as a means of relaxation and improving his health.
It was on these bicycle rides in the countryside that Nutting started taking photographs. In 1904 he 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. By 1915, Nutting claimed to be earning $1,000 per day.
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. One of his most common themes was "Colonials", which were photos of women in traditional 18th-Century roles. These were traditional pictures of femininity, usually pictured indoors in front of a chest, chair, or looking glass. His prints sold from $1.25 to $20.
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.
SOURCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Nutting (Oct 2025)
