Salem from the Southwest
Daniel Welfare was Salem’s first native-born artist. Known for his portraits of town residents, his landscape paintings depict Salem from a variety of physical approaches. The foreground of this view portrays the southwest approach to the town with a privately owned grist mill near the center of the painting which was built in 1819 to replace an earlier mill owned in part by the Church. While the mill and the people nearby remind the viewer of commercial success, the church steeple is actually the highest element of the townscape in the background.
“Welfare was briefly apprenticed to a joiner. He later became a teacher in the Boys School and during his lifetime served the community in many ways: sick-nurse of the Single Brother, tavern keeper, member of the Aufsher Collegium, member of the Salem Light Infantry Company, delegate from the Salem Congregation to the Synod in Herrnhut in 1836.” (Bivins & Welshimer, p.96) Daniel Welfare was also the first portrait and landscape artist in Salem. He studied painting in Philadelphia under Thomas Sully. In 1825, he exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.
