Thanksgiving Thought: Rubens Peale
Thanksgiving always gets me to thinking about early America, particularly about the many changes that happened in our country at that time, which very few of us ever think (or know) about. I’m s ...
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Curator's Corner
An April Birthday Boy: Antoine Vollon
Antoine Vollon, known primarily for his excellent still-life paintings, had a birthday on April 23rd. In the glory days of the annual academic Salon in Paris (1760s–1890s)—when the self-ap ...
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Curator's Corner
Claude Raguet Hirst Realism
Nothing showcases the American obsession with realism in art during the 1800s better than the brief Trompe l’Oeil Realism movement of the 1880s and 1890s. Like the Dutch Baroque realist still-li ...
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Curator's Corner
National Plant a Flower Day: Margherita Caffi and Helen Hamilton
Not only is it National Women’s [Art] History Month, but Monday is National Plant a Flower Day. Due to the two major nor’easters that have rocked the Northeast, I would like to feature a h ...
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Curator's Corner
Deceiving the Eye: American Trompe-l'Oeil Realism
I’ve written before about the long-standing interest in extreme realism in American painting. Colonial American self-taught artists (“limners”) may not have been schooled in anatomy, ...
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Curator's Corner
Still Life and Our Culture of Abundance: John F. Francis
I got so excited the other night while watching Antiques Roadshow. A person brought two little still-life paintings from 1865, and I said to myself, “Oh, those look like John Francis’s wor ...
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Curator's Corner
The Raphael of Flowers: Pierre Joseph Redouté
I don’t usually experience beauty attacks when considering art from France of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Neoclassicism isn’t my thing! But this artist is a standout in a period otherw ...
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Curator's Corner
The Peale Women
The name “Peale” is synonymous with the First Family of American painting. The painters of the Peale family were the first “dynasty” of American art, and what a dynasty! They e ...
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Curator's Corner
A Roesen is Still a Roesen...
I’m a big fan of artists, especially American artists, who may not be household names like Homer, Peale, or Eakins, but who nonetheless had an impact on art during their careers. There is such a ...
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Curator's Corner
Thoughts on Still Life: Willem Kalf
I like to contemplate terms that are used by art historians. One of them is “still life.” In French it’s nature morte (dead nature) and in German it’s Stillleben (sti ...
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