Melons and Pears
Artist
Margaretta Angelica Peale
(American, 1795 - 1882)
Date1820
MediumWatercolor on paper
Dimensions15 7/8 x 20 3/4 in.
ClassificationsWatercolor
Credit LineCharles F. Smith Fund
Terms
Object number1968.08
DescriptionNearly all Margaretta's still lifes were executed in oil on canvas, using a format that did not exceed sixteen by twenty-one inches. "Melons and Pears" is the artist's only known watercolor. This medium is often associated with the amateur efforts produced by young schoolgirls and genteel ladies during the early nineteenth century. Produced with the aid of patterns and stencils called theorems, these works were often decorative but lacked three dimensionality. "Melons and Pears" shares the simple compositional style of these amateur watercolors in its spare background, yet Margaretta's arrangement is much more complicated, for it features a cucumber, two watermelons, a cantaloupe, four pears, and an apple, all ornamented with pear branches and grape leaves. In the best Peale tradition, which favored the realistic depiction of natural objects, her painting is highly detailed, from the pattern of dots along the rim of the platter, to the nubby texture of the cucumber and the dry variegated surface of the cantaloupe. Her modeling also exhibits a knowledge of light and shade, producing a sense of weight and depth not attainable, nor even desirable, in flat decorative theorem paintings. MAS
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Wolfgang Born, "The Female Peales: The Art and Its Tradition," "American Collector" 15 (August 1946): 13-14; Charles Coleman Sellers, "Peale, Anna Claypoole, Margaretta Angelica, and Sarah Miriam," in Edward T. James, "Notable American Women", 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971), vol. 3, p. 39; Anna Sue Hirschorn, "Anna Claypoole, Margaretta, and Sarah Miriam Peale: Modes of Accomplishment and Fortune," in Lillian B. Miller, ed., "The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870", exhib. cat. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996), pp. 220-47.
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