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Peale's fascination with the dead
May. 21st, 2017 11:45 amIt turns out it wasn't just his child's body that interested him. He tried to buy the well-preserved body of a German Lutheran child for exhibition in his museum; he also said he'd like to stuff Benjamin Franklin's corpse -- Franklin was then living -- as a tribute.
I would adore to chase down these citations (screenshot from Wendy Bellion's Citizen Spectator:
Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America, c/o Google Books) someday.
An article you can read with a free MyJSTOR login is "A Death in the Family", Phoebe Lloyd, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 335 (Spring, 1982), pp. 2-13 . This sets the painting in the context of other portraits of death, gives the full poem that was used as both advertisement and trigger warning, and has interesting details on the whys of Rachel Peale's pose.
I would adore to chase down these citations (screenshot from Wendy Bellion's Citizen Spectator:
Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America, c/o Google Books) someday.
An article you can read with a free MyJSTOR login is "A Death in the Family", Phoebe Lloyd, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 335 (Spring, 1982), pp. 2-13 . This sets the painting in the context of other portraits of death, gives the full poem that was used as both advertisement and trigger warning, and has interesting details on the whys of Rachel Peale's pose.
