AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS THE SIMPLE PLEASURES OF STILL LIFE
The final installment of the “American Encounters” series is out, allowing you to provide a new opportunity to foster dialogue on American painting, by exploring the rise of still-lif painting during the 19th century. Still life began as a rather confidential practice, as American painters had a preference for portrait or landscape paintings, which garnered greater interest from patrons. Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825), considered the first American painter of still life, won renown for his austere and efficient style with a focus on products cultivated on American soil, as in Corn and Cantaloupe. With the emergence of wealthy collectors interested in the Dutch Golden Age still lifes, artists like Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) made a specialty of particularly elaborate paintings with subtle symbolism. The Civil War led to an abrupt change. Still-life painters like William Harnett (1848-1892) renewed their focus on characteristically American objects, specializing in trom-l’oeil with a willingly symbolic and sometimes subversive resonance.
Raphaelle Peale. “Orange and Book” Oil on Panel - 1817
American Encounters: The Simple Pleasures of Still Life from February 4 to April 27, 2015 at Louvre Museum in France.
Urbain / Acicate