Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [54]
Peale was the father of seventeen children. He named them after painters and they obliged him by becoming artists, like the portraitist Rembrandt, still-life painter Raphaelle, and artist/naturalist Titian. “The Peale Family” includes nine family members and their faithful nurse (standing with hands folded). Peale himself stoops at left holding his palette. He titled the painting on the easel “Concordia Animae” (Hormony of Souls), indicating the painting’s theme.
The composition emphasizes the essential unity of the group. Although they are divided into two camps, all are linked by cantact of hand or shoulder except the nurse. The figures slightly overlap, with the scattered fruit also binding the two halves. Peale suggests a visual tie by the painter’s brother seated at left sketching his mother and her grandchild at right. This type of picture, or “conversation piece, ” was popular in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century painting. It represents perfectly the ideal of e pluribus unum.
Peole’s most famous work is “The Staircase Group,” a life-size trompe l’oeil portrait of his two sons climbing stairs with a real step at the bottom and door jamb as a frame. Peale painted the scene so convincingly that George Washington reportedly tipped his hat to the boys.
At the age of 86, the inexhaustible Peale was known to whoop down hills riding one of the first bicycles. He finally succumbed to overexertion while searching for a fourth wife.
BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN ART. The fact that a talented American had to pursue his craft in England was due to the backward state of the arts. Most colonists were farmers, preoccupied with survival and more interested in utility than beauty. They were from working-class stock, hardly the type to commission works of art. The influence of Puritanism with its prejudice against “graven images” meant that the church would not be a patron. There were no large buildings to adorn or great wealth to buy luxury items. Silver and furnishings showed fine craftsmanship and Federal architecture was handsome. But sculpture was practically unknown except for graveyard statuary.
The first American painters were generally self-taught portrait or sign painters. Their work was flat, sharply outlined, and lacking in focal point. Portraiture was, not surprisingly, the most sought-after art form, since politics stressed respect for the individual. Itinerant limners, as early painters were called, painted faceless single or group portraits in the winter and, in spring, sought customers and filled in the blanks.
Copley, “Portrait of Paul Revere,” c. 1768-70, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Copley’s portraits of Boston society offered sharp glimpses into his subjects’ personalities.
COPLEY: THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN PAINTER. Painting in America was considered a “useful trade like that of a Carpenter or shoe maker, not as one of the most noble Arts in the world,” complained America’s first painter of note, John Singleton Copley (pronounced COPP lee; 1738-1815). Despite this disrespect, the Bostonian taught himself the profession by studying anatomy books and reproductions of paintings. In his teens, he set up as a portrait painter and, by the age of 20, completely outstripped any native artist. He was the first colonial to have a work exhibited abroad. With Copley, art in America grew up.
Copley had an astonishing ability to record reality accurately. His subjects had real bulk, and he brilliantly simulated reflected light on various textures. Copley also portrayed his sitter’s personality with penetrating observation. Eliminating the columns and red curtains used to dress up portraits, he concentrated on the fleeting expressions and gestures that reveal character. Although he painted his well-to-do clients’ costumes in detail, he focused on the individuality of their faces, where each wrinkle suggested character.
PAINTING THE CHARACTER OF THE COLONIES. Copley’s portrayal of his friend, a shirt-sleeved