After moving into her Turkey Hill house in Westport, Connecticut in the 1970s Martha Stewart noticed that the walls were a little too bare. She decided to take matters into her own hands. Vintage photos show the iconic businesswoman adorning her walls with green and terracotta trees with a paintbrush in hand, creating a massive mural of a forest scene.
Inventive as she is, Stewart's mural idea didn't come to her in a vacuum. According to the self-proclaimed Martha archivist and editor of the Martha's Moments Blog, Andrew Ritchie, it was inspired by the artist Rufus Porter. Porter was a 19th-century artist and inventor famed for his large landscapes inspired by his time spent in Maine and Massachusetts. Referred to as 'The Yankee Da Vinci' by the New England Historical Society, he popularized the art of stenciled, pastoral murals on the dry plaster walls popular in New England at the time. Throughout his career, he is known to have painted at least 160 murals on the walls of houses and taverns in the region.
