AFA 18th Anniversary

18th Anniversary 136 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com T he recently published The Art of the Peales presents the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s unparalleled body of work by America’s first artistic dynasty. Thanks to Robert L. McNeil Jr.’s gift of his personal collection, 1 the museum, which previously possessed a fine but small group of works, now contains over 150 works by fifteen different artists in the family of Charles Willson Peale. The largest, most diverse collection of their art, created between the early 1770s and the early twentieth century, it encompasses watercolor on ivory miniatures, oil portraits, landscapes and still life in oil, and prints, drawings, and cut paper profiles. It also contains a wide variety of Peale family portraits, of which The Staircase Group is the most well-known. The scope of this collection, which includes the work of six female artists, provides an opportunity to explore the dynamics of artistic influence and illuminate how the Peales responded to one another’s work by selectively borrowing, adapting, or replicating forms, techniques, and entire compositions. These interactions were motivated by a desire to master artistic skills, to assist a parent or sibling in completing commissions, or to derive financial benefit by meeting an established demand for a type of work made popular by another family member. In the process, the Peales maintained their affinities to one another while developing their individual areas of expertise. Examples of these interactions are illustrated by the ways in which James Peale’s daughters Margaretta and Sarah Miriam, as well as their cousin, Rubens, and his daughter, Mary Jane, adapted the still life pictures of James and Raphaelle, who had brilliantly reinvented European still life forms for an American audience. Also, notable are the examples of portraiture that illustrate the impact of Rembrandt Peale’s methods on the work of his cousin Sarah Miriam and his niece Mary Jane, as well as the way in which his finely crafted realistic portraiture informed the late style of his father, Charles Willson Peale. The Art Peales of the by Carol Eaton Soltis