Self-Portrait With Angelica And Portrait Of Rachel #5
by Charles Willson Peale
Title
Self-Portrait With Angelica And Portrait Of Rachel #5
Artist
Charles Willson Peale
Medium
Painting - Art Print
Description
Charles Willson Peale painted a number of self-portraits throughout his career, but the Bayou Bend portrait is one of his most complex and revealing statements about his art and its close relationship to domesticity, family enterprise, and the educational role of art. Seated in a Windsor armchair while painting a portrait, the artist turns slightly and directs his gaze toward the viewer. Without actually gripping the brush, his daughter Angelica Kauffmann Peale (1775–1853) at right playfully appears to guide it with one hand, as her other hand points toward heaven, assuming the role of the allegorical muse of painting. To the left, Rachel Brewer Peale (1744–1790), the artist’s wife, peers out of the painted canvas toward the viewer with an expression as lifelike as those of the artist and daughter. Peale, then, challenges the viewer to consider issues of illusion and reality and the artist’s magical ability to transform pigment (as suggested by the blobs of paint revealed to the viewer on the palette, carefully juxtaposed with the vibrantly alive portrait of his wife on the easel). Such investigations into the art of portraiture as more than a mimetic enterprise are characteristic of the artist’s most sophisticated works.
Uploaded
August 3rd, 2023
Embed
Share
Comments
There are no comments for Self-Portrait With Angelica And Portrait Of Rachel #5. Click here to post the first comment.