Today’s illustration includes a photograph of 101 Maxwell Street from the late nineteenth century. The man at the gate is Walter Lansil. Walter and his brother Wilbur were artists. Walter’s portrait photo appears above Wilbur’s. The modern photo of the house is from Google Street View. The house is located across from the former Frank V. Thompson School, now the Boston International High School.
The vintage photograph shows that the house had an outbuilding, which disappeared from the atlases between 1918 and 1933. Walter Franklin Lansil was an American painter. Born in Bangor, Maine, he first studied under Jeremiah Pearson Hardy, then moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1872 with his younger brother and fellow painter Wilbur Lansil (1855-1897). In 1888 the brothers sailed to Europe, where Lansil studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and became enchanted with Venice, a city he would paint for the rest of his life. By 1891 the brothers had returned to Boston, and began holding joint exhibits at their studio in Dorchester. Walter Lansil was a member of theBoston Art Club and The Society of Sons of the Revolution. Although the New York Times called him in 1897 “the celebrated Venetian painter”, he also painted marine scenes, battles, and portraits. In 1914 he published a memoir entitled A Trip to Venice. Wilbur H. Lansil is best known for his landscapes and paintings of cattle.