FEATURED OBJECT

To celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, we invited members of our community to each select an object in our permanent collection and explain why they thought it was significant—either for Delaware’s history or our contemporary moment. We will share their responses throughout 2026. These also will appear on wall labels as part of our exhibition “Reflections: 25 Objects for 250 Years of Delaware History.”

Henry Lea Tatnall (1829-85)

Landscape—Brandywine

The owner of a lumber business in Wilmington, Tatnall did not begin painting until he was in his thirties. He claimed that he made his first painting while in a trance and, upon awakening, beheld a “completed picture of correct perspective and coloring.”[1] Self-taught, he mostly painted scenes of the Brandywine River. There was enough demand for his work that he eventually retired from the lumber business, turning it over to his sons, and devoted himself to painting full-time.

His home became a lively gathering place for artists and musicians. Tatnall actively supported other artists in the region by helping to find buyers for their work and providing housing and materials. He was at the center of a growing group of painters in the 1870s and 1880s that included Frankling Dulin Briscoe, Jefferson D. Chalfant, James Hamilton, Clawson S. Hammitt, William Harnett, and Thomas Moran. Dubbed “The Father of Wilmington Art,” Tatnall was the founder of the Delaware Artists Association and its president at the time of his death. Also an avid musician and composer, Tatnall wrote a popular campaign song for Abraham Lincoln titled “The Rail Splitters Polka.”

[1] Henry Lea Tatnall, Jr., “Recollections of Henry Lea Tatnall,” typescript, 1933, pp. 13, 14. Helen Farr Sloan Library, Delaware Art Museum.

COMMUNITY CURATOR

Response by:

Joyce Enzor Maust

Current DE House of Representatives Poet Laureate

Aged trees hold history

they remember, before inked lines

appeared upon maps,

imprisoning wildlands

where waters once flowed unrestrained.

Footprints, unseen,

surrendered stories to soil.

Seeped silently into the mycelium

where the woodlands commune

and chronicled a treaty

with promises once given.

Sacred land – now owned.

Promises unkept.

Traces of time bind us

to yesteryear.

Deer paths morphed into cow paths.

The rhythmic rattle of wagons,

carriages, and commerce

reshaped the lay of the land.

Deep ruts cut into soil

before we concealed nature’s wounds

beneath layers of asphalt.

History buried ancestral legacy underground,

where routes charted northward

led to freedom,

and southern roads

steered towards enslavement.

At this crossroads of civilization,

we honor unmarked graves

that sustained our past,

and the breezes that whisper

of lives once lived.

To walk forward,

we must listen backward –

tell history down to the roots,

where growth and decay intertwine.