03.

Inventing the American

Artist
Art H 220 | October 6, 2021
Announcements
• Changes to our TA team: introducing Dr. Gloria de Liberali (she/her)
• Sections AA and AB
• Quiz details at the end of class
Key questions for today: What did it mean to be an
artist in the early Republic?

How should artists be

educated in the new nation?

How should artists educate

their public?
Two approaches, two directions for American Art in the new nation: Samuel Morse and Charles Willson Peale

Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1833, oil on canvas

Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, 1822, oil on canvas, PAFA
The
Peale
Family:
Imagining
family life &
the artist’s
role

Group
portrait

Charles Willson
Peale, The Peale
Family, begun
1773,
completed
1809, oil on
canvas, NYHS
 What is the point of all of these criss-crossed glances and intermixing of families?
Art—both making and observing it —connects the family.
CWP: emphasizes art from observation of nature and life.

Margaret Jane

Patriarch –
supervising
drawing Charles nurse
Willson
Subject of Rachel
art?

Margaret
Elizabeth

Eleanor
James Margaret
St. George

Argus J
How do we see the importance of
art, education, and observation in
this painting?
Charles Willson Peale,
The Staircase Group
(Raphaelle Peale and Titian
Ramsey Peale), 1795, oil
on canvas, PMA

Peale kids (an incomplete list)

Original title when
Raphaelle exhibited at the
Angelica Kauffmann Columbianum in
Rembrandt 1795: Whole Length—
Titian I Portraits of Two of His
Rubens Sons on a Staircase
Sophonisba Anguisciola
Vandyke
Charles Linnaeus
Benjamin Franklin
Titian 2
How is this painting about educating
What’s the subject
the American artist?
matter?

Sons Raphaelle
(below) and Titian on
a spiral staircase.

Raphaelle holds a
palette, brush, and
maulstick (steadies
painter’s hand).
Illusionism: using perspective, shading, or
foreshortening to create the illusion of a real object
or scene

More
illusionism:
painting
installed with
real wooden
Admission ticket to Peale’s Museum. step in front.
Engraved by Charles Willson Peale, 1794.
How is this a painting about educating the
American artist?

A comment on artistic training.

The art student learns step by step, from

the easiest operations to the most difficult.

Learning to become an artist is an uphill

climb towards a lofty place (mingling with
God)

Does it also propose a new,

American hierarchy for the
arts?
 1.
History
Painting

Recall: 2.
Portraits
Academic
hierarchy of 3. Genre
painting
genres
4.
Landscape
art

5. Still life
Does it also propose a new,
American hierarchy for the arts,
independent from the European Portraits
academic tradition?

Where does history

painting fit in?

Genre scene

Still life – ticket and wood

Craft – wooden step

Still life

Raphaelle Peale, Still life with Strawberries and Ostrich Egg Cup, 1814,
Seattle Art Museum
“the painting of objects that
have no motion, which any
person of tolerable genius,
with some application may
acquire”

Raphaelle Peale, Still life with Strawberries and Ostrich Egg Cup, 1814,
Seattle Art Museum
Trompe l’oeil = eye-deceiver

Tricks the viewer into thinking the things

represented are the things themselves

How does Raphaelle Peale’s “deception” trick

the viewer?

Raphaelle Peale, Venus Rising from the Sea—A Deception, ca. 1822. Oil on
canvas, 29 1/8 × 24 1/8 in. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 34-147.
Detail

Can you see any brush strokes?

Is this illusionistic?
James Barry (1741–1806),
Venus Anadyomene (c
1772), oil on canvas,
dimensions not known,
Ulster Museum, Belfast,
Northern Ireland. The
Athenaeum
What’s the point?

Trompe l’oeil taught Americans how to look

closely and see skeptically in a world where the
line between real and fake was often blurred.

A response to his father?

Raphaelle Peale, Venus Rising from the Sea—A Deception, ca. 1822. Oil on
canvas, 29 1/8 × 24 1/8 in. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 34-147.
Staircase Group was installed at Peale’s
Museum in Phila. – another place where
CWP asked questions about art and According to Peale,
observation. his genius is his ability
to see in all 3 ways at
How does Peale represent himself as artist once (naturalist,
and educator in this self-portrait at the museum director,
Peale Museum? painter).

Museum Painter
director (composes,
(organizes, presents)
attracts)

Naturalist
(collects,
classifies, Charles Willson Peale, The
preserves) Artist in His Museum, 1822,
oil on canvas, PAFA
As an American artist, what is Peale’s
responsibility to his fellow citizens?

Controlling our vision

Grants access, empowers viewers

Trains the audience’s vision—teaches

us how to see (next slide)
 Teaches us how to see

Gentleman
and son:
looking at
specimens
teaches how to
place yourself
within the
great chain of
being

Quaker
woman: must
know the
difference
between
illusion and the
real thing.
What did being an American artist mean
to Charles Willson Peale?
Another figure who defined what it meant to be an American
artist in the early Republic: Samuel F.B. Morse.
(Inventor of morse code, the telegraph--also an artist!)

Charles Willson Peale, The Peale Family, begun 1773, completed

1809, oil on canvas, NYHS

Samuel F. B. Morse, The Morse Family, ca. 1810, watercolor, NMAH

[conversation piece]
Morse: how to become an artist in America?

“Native” subjects vs. continental taste: “He may be a gainer at home, but he will be a
loser abroad”

Samuel F. B. Morse, The Morse Family, ca. 1810, watercolor, NMAH

1. Get a mentor (Washington Allston)

2. Study drawing, copy the great masters, read

art theory, study anatomy

3. Go to London!
Morse travels abroad
in 1811, studies with
Benjamin West, then
the president of the
Royal Academy.

What does Pratt’s

painting tell us about the
process of becoming an
American artist?

Matthew Pratt, The American

School, 1765, oil on canvas,
Met
Benjamin West Copying a
classical bust

Matthew Pratt

Matthew Pratt, The American

School, 1765, oil on canvas,
Met
 Morse’s influences were typical for an American art student in Europe:
Samuel F. B. Morse, The
Laocoön and His Sons (Laocoön Group), copy
after an Hellenistic original from ca. 200 Dying Hercules, 1812, oil on
BC, marble, Vatican Museums canvas, Yale
Washington Allston, The Dead Man Restored to
Life by Touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha,
ANTIQUE 1811-13. PAFA.
SCULPTURE

OLD
MASTER
PAINTINGS
AT THE
LOUVRE
Guido Reni, Hercules on a
Funeral Pyre, 1617-19, oil on
WORK BY
canvas, Louvre HIS
MENTORS
Morse and others founded The The Antique School at the National Academy of Design, engraving made after
National Academy of Design 1826
(1825) – envisioned a Royal
Academy at home, so American
students wouldn’t have to go to
Europe.

Curriculum
emphasized:
Antique casts
Life drawing
Lectures: anatomy,
perspective, ancient
history,
architecture,
mythology

Paradox of American art?

“American” art founded on European models.
 Morse’s response to that paradox: Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1833, oil on canvas

American
students in the
US couldn’t see
Old Master
paintings, only
available as
engravings (black
and white prints).

No major art
museums in the
US! (Peale’s
museum mostly
stuffed eagles
and mastodon
bones).

This painting =
Morse’s
response.
 Nicolas-Sébastien Maillot, View of the Salon Carré at the Louvre in 1831,
François-Joseph Heim, Charles X Distributing 1831
Awards at the Salon of 1824, 1825-27, oil on
canvas

Salon Carré: a space for the display and celebration of French national identity
Why this choice of subject, for an American artist who wants to create a new national academy?
Morse mixes
things up.
Creates an
imaginary
gallery of the
European
works HE
saw as
significant for
American
artists.
James Fenimore
Cooper with
Who is in his
wife Susan and Horatio
gallery?
daughter Susan Greenough

Samuel F.
B. Morse,
Richard Gallery of
Morse the Louvre,
Habersham ???
(central, 1833, oil
Susan, Morse’s daughter teacher) on canvas
 Van Dyck (Dutch),
Venus Asking Vulcan
1. History for the Arms for Placement adheres to a European
paintings Aeneas, 1630-2, oil Academic hierarchy of genres.
on canvas
Raphael (Italian),
Madonna and Child
with the Infant St.
John, 1507-8, oil
on canvas
Veronese (Venetian),
Wedding Feast at Cana, 2. Religious paintings
1562-3, oil on canvas
Claude (French), Sunset at the
Harbor, 1639, oil on canvas

3. Landscapes

David Teniers the 4. Genre scenes

Younger (Flemish),
The Knife Grinder, Watteau (French), Pilgrimage
1640, oil on canvas to the Isle of Cythera, 1717, oil
on canvas
 Morse’s dream: to separate the Western tradition of painting from European
aristocratic culture; make it available for an American middle class.

Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre,

1833, oil on canvas

A democratic space?
“Everyone” (white, American, with some means) can be enlightened (intellectually and spiritually), if simply given the proper
training.
Both Peale and Morse view art as public education and see education as key
to national development.

How do their approaches differ?

Role of the artist?
Both educators; Peale looms large, Morse among his students
Artistic genres?
Euro hierarchy for Morse, not for Peale
Models to emulate & study?
For Morse, Euro art mediated by the American teacher; for Peale, only
“native” American artists and specimens
Quiz #1
• Where: Canvas
• When: Opens today at 1pm, closes at 9am on Monday
• You can take the quiz at any time between 1pm Wed – 9am Mon. Once you
begin, you will have thirty minutes to complete the quiz.
• What: 5 multiple choice questions about material introduced in lectures,
section, and (non-textbook) readings
• Other important details:
• All quizzes are open note/open book.
• There are no make-ups for missed quizzes except for exceptional circumstances,
but your lowest grade will be dropped.