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.