Museum Publications - New Bedford Whaling Museum

Museum Publications

A list of titles published by the the Old Dartmouth Historical Society – New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Museum Publications

While owning the world’s most comprehensive collection of art, artifacts and original documents of whaling history the Museum also collects broadly in maritime and local history. Collections include objects across a broad range of categories: fine and decorative art, folk art, photography, domestic artifacts, artifacts that represent the history of technology and industry, books, manuscripts, maps and charts, ethnographic materials, clothing and textiles, and extensive personal, business, and financial records. This is a very diverse and rich social history collection.

Alphabetic Listing

The Azorean Spirit: The Art of Domingos Rebêlo

Domingos Rebêlo (1891-1975) is revered among the first generation of Portuguese modernist painters. He mastered techniques in drawing, illustration, and painting, and drew inspiration from Azorean identity and regional motifs and themes of his native island of São Miguel. He later moved to Lisbon, worked on church and government mural projects, and became a leading painter of Portuguese culture, its people and its landscapes.

The Azorean Spirit: The Art of Domingos Rebêlo is a 250-page, full-color, hardcover exhibition catalogue with six scholarly essays by Portuguese and American scholars, as well as a foreword and introduction, and artist chronology. The accompanying exhibit and this extraordinary publication is the result of more than two decades of research by the artist's grandson, Jorge Rebêlo.

 

A Wild Note of Longing: Albert Pinkham Ryder and a Century of American Art

By Christina Connett Brophy, PhD, Elizabeth Broun, PhD, and William C. Agee

This long-overdue new look at the life and work of beloved painter Albert Pinkham Ryder explores the powerful and enduring directions he forged for generations of American modernists.

Few American artists have captured painters’ imaginations with the gripping force of Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917). The brooding spirituality of his works, coupled with formal innovation decades ahead of its time, have long made Ryder a favorite of trailblazers like Jackson Pollock, Marsden Hartley, and Robert Rauschenberg. And yet, the artist’s biography and practices remain elusive. A Wild Note of Longing—whose title comes from a Ryder poem—takes up the challenge, bringing a new generation of scholarship to the most comprehensive collection of Ryder masterworks assembled to date.

Ryder is considered a seminal artist for both the late nineteenth-century Gilded Age and for the emerging modernism of the early twentieth century. This monumental new book presents multiple voices from leaders in the field on the continuing and ever evolving relevance of Albert Pinkham Ryder in modern art. In addition to a general overview of the artist’s career, essays also cover Ryder within the context of his hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Ryder’s influence and context within modernism.

Christina Connett Brophy is The Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for the Chief Curator, New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Broun is Director Emerita of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery; she is the Visual Arts Advisor to the Kennedy Center, and a member of the boards of the Henry Luce Foundation and the Olana Partnership.

William C. Agee is Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor Emeritus of Art History, Hunter College, New York, and is former director of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Pasadena Art Museum.

George Gale: ‘A Sea-nurtured Artist’

By Michael P. Dyer, Curator of Maritime History

George Gale: ‘A Sea-nurtured Artist’ 
is a completely fresh overview of the work of one of the last American artists to document the American whale fishery firsthand. George Gale was most famous for his etchings of maritime scenes, a superb selection of which can be seen here, with both physical descriptions of works and interpretive analysis of their subjects.

 

The Voices of Marine Mammals: William E. Schevill and William A. Watkins: Pioneers in Bioacoustics

The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s publication Voices of Marine Mammals: William E. Schevill and William A. Watkins: Pioneers in Bioacoustics honors the groundbreaking work of Schevill and Watkins, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in the field of marine bioacoustics. The book consists of twelve chapters by different authors, who worked with or whose work was influenced by Watkins and Schevill. The Whaling Museum recently received a donation from WHOI of Watkins’s and Schevill’s instruments and research. The publication speaks to the themes of the scientific trajectory of bioacoustics. Topics include recording and tagging instruments; institutional histories; the contributions and legacy of the two men; and their current roles as resources for conservation and research.

The book is 125 pages long, with color and black and white photographs. It measures 9″ x 11″ x 1.5″. Voices of Marine Mammals includes a flexi-disc insert with audio recordings of Watkins, Schevill, and marine mammal sounds, as a nod to the bioacoustic recordings of the 1950s and 60s.


Caption: William E. Schevill (left) and William A. Watkins (right)

The Photographer’s Brush: Watercolors

by Norman Fortier

The Photographer’s Brush catalog presents a unique opportunity to see many works from private collections by a truly remarkable local artist. While the exhibition consists of 30 paintings, the richly illustrated companion catalog includes many more, as well as photographs and personal stories from collectors, friends, and family of Norman Fortier.

Norman Fortier (1919-2010) is best known nationally as a photogra­pher, particularly for his maritime pictures of yachts and regattas tak­en in and around Buzzards Bay, Narragansett Bay, and other popular waters of New England. However, Fortier was also a terrific watercol­or painter and his charming renderings of boats, people, and plac­es in his beloved Padanaram and farther afield also benefited from his gifted eye for light and composition. At his harbor front studio on Elm Street, Fortier would host friends and fellow yachtsmen, many of whom would commission a boat portrait or two by the charismatic artist.

In the exhibition and this accompanying catalog, old friends, family, and fans have loaned the majority of the watercolors on display and in print, which together demonstrate his extraordinary range of style, from broad planes of colorful spinnakers at the starting line to playful light flickering off the trees of Elm Street, to images of clap­board houses reminiscent of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth.

 

A Spectacle in Motion: The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, Vol.1&2

This two-volume publication dives into the detail and narrative of the Panorama and allows people to quite literally hold the entire artwork in the palm of their hands. A maritime artwork of national historical importance, the Panorama is a first-hand account of a whaling voyage originating from the port of New Bedford, MA in the mid-19th century. At 1,275′ long, the Panorama is one of the longest paintings in the United States. The Panorama was painted in 1848 and today it represents an important piece of 19th century American visual culture. It documents the historic importance of the American whaling industry, as well as the industry’s global, cultural, social, and industrial impacts. This publication highlights the importance of interpreting, studying, exhibiting, and conserving this one-of-a-kind national treasure.

Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings in the New Bedford Whaling Museum

By Dr. Stuart M. Frank, Senior Curator Emeritus

This remarkable publication highlights the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Collection of Old Master paintings, one of the crown jewels of the Collection. The artworks represent one of history’s most remarkable eras of cultural, artistic, nautical, and scientific florescence: The Dutch Golden Age, and include some of the earliest marine paintings in North America, as well as the first-ever oil painting of a whaling scene.

These works are by far the largest and most important maritime collection outside the Netherlands and are, without rival, the envy of even the great institutional collections in England and Holland. Featured artists include: Esaias van de Velde, Cornelis Verbeeck, Heerman Witmont, Abraham Matthuys, and Adam Willaerts – to name a few.

In line with the current renaissance of a Dutch and Flemish Art movement in New England, the Museum will aim to partner with institutions such as the Museum of Fine Art and the Harvard Art Museum on sharing exhibitions as well as this book.

Purchase online or in the Museum’s gift store The White Whale.
Available in both hard-cover and soft-cover versions.

O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea: Original Art of the Yankee Whale Hunt

By Michael P. Dyer, Curator of Maritime History, New Bedford Whaling Museum

One of three books short listed for the 2018 Alice Award, presented by Furthermore grants in publishing, a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

Buried deep within the logbooks, journals and manuscripts of America’s 19th century whaling heritage are watercolor paintings and other drawings and representations of the hunt rarely if ever seen by the public. With the combined collections of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the Kendall Whaling Museum, an unparalleled opportunity exists to bring these hidden artworks into the public eye. I propose to write a book that brings this art form to life in the context in which it was created; in a maritime culture, on shipboard, at sea, during the daily hunting of whales. Scrimshaw is another important element of whaling art and will be included but because this book focuses exclusively on the art of the hunt, the choices of scrimshaw will be limited only to those pieces most relevant as documentary, inspired or directly focused on the hunt itself. This book will highlight artworks that capture the essence of whaling, its culture, the vessels used in it, the geographical locales of where it took place and the animals commonly pursued. Comparing scrimshaw whaling scenes with whalemen’s paintings and drawings has never been done before although the comparisons are obvious.

More than just a picture book, this work is based on the premise that whalemen recorded important events pictorially, not at random and not necessarily generically. These events included encounters with large whales, the deaths of friends and shipmates and other dramatic or memorable moments. At the same time, the illustrations are documents of a maritime culture rarely if ever examined as such and there is a potential social historical element to these works.

As it is loosely arranged chronologically, the evolution of a more formal style of American whaling art will also be examined beginning with navigation exercise books from the early 1800s and ending with the photography and large-scale oil paintings of Clifford W. Ashley in the early 20th century.

This approach to whaling art has never before been attempted in print. In fact, this whole subject has only ever been addressed once and that was in 1983 in the book by Kenneth R. Martin, Whalemen’s Paintings and DrawingsThe Art of the American Whaleman is intended to be a pleasure for the general reader and a useful tool for the scholar, collector, nautical enthusiast and art historian. I am proposing primarily a maritime art book building on my accumulating body of work and original research.


CAPTION: Sperm whaling scene by Oliver Wilcox, seaman on board of the ship, Canton. (*see below for more information about this artwork)


*Oliver Wilcox, seaman onboard of the ship Canton of New Bedford under the command of Abraham Gardner while on a voyage to the Pacific Ocean drew this sperm whaling scene in the journal of one of his shipmates onboard. It shows the action of May 3, 1837 on the Japan Grounds, North Pacific, where three whales were taken, one boat completely destroyed, another slightly damaged and three whales lost as the harpoons pulled free or broke, or the whale line parted. In addition to the detailed whaling scene, Wilcox carefully drew the woman figurehead at the bow of the ship and in another equally panoramic scene drew the details of the stern of the vessel. (KWM #252, anonymous journal kept onboard the same voyage).

A Man for All Oceans: Captain Joshua Slocum and the First Solo Voyage Around the World

By Stan Grayson

Captain Joshua Slocum (1844– 909) was the first person to sail alone around the world. More than a century ago in Fairhaven, Mass., he rebuilt an old sloop called the Spray and it was on that vessel that he made history.

Author Stan Grayson has been researching Slocum’s life for years and has uncovered primary sources that have yielded information to fill significant gaps in our understanding of Slocum’s life and voyages. Grayson also authored A Genius at His Trade: C. Raymond Hunt and His Remarkable Boats in 2015.

The Whaling Museum and Tilbury House Books partnered to publish A Man for All Oceans.

Learn more about Joshua Slocum.

Treasures of the Whaling Museum: Touchstones to the Region’s Past

Publication date: September 26th, 2015

As a touchstone to the region’s past, the New Bedford Whaling Museum has evolved as a nexus for the diverse communities of southeastern Massachusetts. How did the Museum come into existence and why does its relevance continue to grow with each generation? The answers are presented in this comprehensive new publication, designed as a keepsake volume of the museum experience, in which concise text and copious reproductions illuminate the history and scope of the world’s largest museum dedicated to the global interaction of humans with whales.

Motivated to preserve the whaling artifacts and narratives of the region, the Museum was founded in 1903 by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society whose members included the leading families of the American whaling industry. Established “to create and foster an interest in the history of Old Dartmouth” – which today comprises New Bedford, Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven and Westport, Massachusetts – the Society continues to oversee the steady growth of the Museum, which is located on an ancient hillside campus within New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.

This volume documents the Museum’s many superlatives, including the world’s largest library of whaling logbooks, prints, and journals and the largest collection of scrimshaw. The Museum collection exceeds more than 750,000 items and is home to the world’s largest ship model, Lagoda, a half-scale whale ship built in 1916. The complete skeletons of four species of whale, including a rare Blue whale – the world’s largest mammal – a sperm whale and a humpback, plus a mother and fetus of the highly endangered Northern Atlantic Right whale, inform today’s pressing global issues of the pursuit and preservation of these remarkable animals.

Funded in part by the New York Community Trust – Wattles Family Charitable Trust Fund, this book is a must-have memento for whaling history enthusiasts, scholars and a growing number of visitors from around the world to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Treasures of the Whaling Museum, design by Lakuna Design

Alphabetical Listing A-K

Bernhard, Kilian.  The Voyage of the Schooner Polar Bear: Whaling and Trading in the North Pacific and Arctic, 1913-1914. Edited by John Bockstoce. New Bedford, Mass.: Published by the New Bedford Whaling Museum by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society; [Anchorage]: Historical Commission 1983.

Blanchette, David. Xico: A Boy, A Rat and A Whaleship. New Bedford, Mass.: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2013. Xico’s Journey Interactive

Blasdale, Mary Jean. Artists of New Bedford: A Biographical Dictionary. New Bedford, Mass.: Published at the New Bedford Whaling Museum by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1990.

Bockstoce, John R. Whales, Ice, and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic. Seattle: University of Washington Press in association with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1986.

Bradford, William. The Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Photographs taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland. Boston, Mass.: David R. Godine in association with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2013. Learn more

Connett, Christina. Thou Shalt Knot: Clifford W. Ashley. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2017. Learn more

Connett Brophy, Christina; Elizabeth Broun, and William C. Agee.  A Wild Note of Longing: Albert Pinkham Ryder and a Century of American Art. New Bedford, Mass.: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2020. Learn more

Dyer, Michael P. George Gale: ‘A Sea-nurtured Artist’. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2019. Learn more

Dyer, Michael P. “O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea”: Original Art of the Yankee Whale Hunt. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2017.

Fortier, Norman, et al. On the Wind: The Marine Photographs of Norman Fortier. Jaffrey, N.H.: David R. Godine, 2007.

Frank, Stuart M. Classic Whaling Prints. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2009. Learn more

Frank, Stuart M. Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings in the New Bedford Whaling Museum. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2018.

Frank, Stuart. Ingenious Contrivances, Curiously Carved: Scrimshaw in the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Jaffrey, N.H.: David R. Godine in association with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2012. Learn more

Grayson, Stan. A Genius at His Trade: C. Raymond Hunt and His Remarkable Boats. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2015. Learn more

Hall, Elton Wayland. Panoramic Views of Whaling by Benjamin Russell. New Bedford: Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum, 1981.

Hall, Elton Wayland. Sperm Whaling from New Bedford: Clifford W. Ashley’s Photographs of Bark Sunbeam in 1904. New Bedford, Mass. (18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, 02740): Old Dartmouth Historical Society, ca. 1982.

Howland, Llewellyn, III. No Ordinary Being: W. Starling Burgess, Inventor, Naval Architect, Poet, Aviation Pioneer, and Master of American Design : a biography / by Llewellyn Howland III. Jaffrey, N.H.: David Godine in association with the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Mystic Seaport Museum, 2015. Learn more

Kugler, Richard C. New Bedford and Old Dartmouth: A Portrait of a Region’s Past, A Bicentennial Exhibition of The Old Dartmouth Historical Society at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, December 4, 1975 – April 18, 1976. New Bedford, Mass.: Trustees of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1975.

Kugler, Richard C. William Allen Wall, an Artist of New Bedford: An Exhibition Held in Celebration of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society at the Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts, November 9 – December 31, 1978. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, ca. 1978.

Kugler, Richard C. William Bradford: Sailing Ships and Arctic Seas. New Bedford, Mass.: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2003.

Alphabetical Listing M-Z

Lund, Judith N. and R. Michael Wall. Art and Artifacts from the New Bedford Whaling Museum: Ship Models. New Bedford, Mass.: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2013.

Lytle, Thomas G. Harpoons and Other Whalecraft. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, Whaling Museum, 1984.

Martin, John F. Around the World in Search of Whales: A Journal of the Lucy Ann Voyage, 1841-1844New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2016. Learn more

Mónica, Maria Filomena. The Dabneys: A Bostonian Family in the Azores 1806-1871. Lisbon: Luso-American Development Foundation in cooperation with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2013.

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Art and Artifacts from the New Bedford Whaling Museum: American Landscape and Seascape Paintings. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2010.

New Bedford Whaling Museum. The Azorean Spirit: The Art of Domingos Rebêlo. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society - New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2022.

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Benjamin Russell: Whaleman-Artist, Entrepreneur. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society – New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2014. Learn more

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Famine, Friends & Fenians. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2016. Learn more

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Inner Light: The World of William Bradford. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2016. Learn more

New Bedford Whaling Museum. The Photographer’s Brush: Watercolors by Norman Fortier. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2019.

New Bedford Whaling Museum. A Spectacle in Motion: The Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, Vol 1&2.New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2018.

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Treasures of the Whaling Museum: Touchstones to the Region’s Past. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2015.

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Two Brothers Goulart; Photography in New Bedford and the Azores. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1996.

New Bedford Whaling Museum The Voices of Marine Mammals: William E. Schevill and William A. Watkins: Pioneers in BioacousticsNew Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2019. Learn more

New Bedford Whaling Museum. Yankee Baleeiros: The Shared Legacy of Lusophone and Yankee Whalers. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2015. Learn more

Old Dartmouth Historical Society. Images of Childhood: An Exhibition of Pictures and Objects from Nineteenth-Centuary New Bedford Held at the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, December 17, 1976 – April 2, 1977. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1977.

Old Dartmouth Historical Society. Traveling with Mrs. Tripp: A Merchant Wife in the China Trade. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1998.

Ricketson, Annie Holmes. The Journal of Annie Holmes Ricketson on the Whaleship A.R. Tucker, 1871-1874. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1958.

Ronnberg, Erik A. R. Jr. To Build a Whaleboat: Historical Notes and a Modelmaker’s Guide. New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum, 1985.

Thomas, Sylvia. Saga of a Yankee Whalemen. New Bedford, Mass.: Trustees of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, c. 1981.

Wright, David G. R. Swain Gifford: A Catalogue of Etchings, 1865-1891. New Bedford, Mass.: New Bedford Whaling Museum, ca. 2002.