Q and Art: Anna Claypoole Peale March 20, 2013

This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: "Q and Art," where American Art's Research department brings you interesting questions and answers about art and artists from our archive.

Woman in a Red Dress by Anna Claypoole Peale

Question: What can you tell me about the artist Anna Claypoole Peale?

Answer: Anna Claypoole Peale (1791-1878) was the first professional woman from her family of artists. She learned to draw and paint from her father, miniature portrait painter James Peale. Other artists in her family included her uncle Charles Willson Peale, cousins Rembrandt and Raphaelle Peale, and younger sisters Margaretta Angelica and Sarah Miriam Peale. Despite her influential family, it was Anna Claypoole's ambition and courage that led her to be a successful artist capable of financially supporting herself and her parents.

Peale sold her first paintings at age fourteen when she copied two works by French painter Claude-Joseph Vernet and submitted them to an auction. Around age sixteen she was apprenticed to her father and worked on the background and clothing details of his portraits. During Peale's time, women in her class were expected to remain at home and value privacy. However, anonymity was not an option for a portrait painter, and Peale advertised her name and address in exhibition catalogues. In 1811 she exhibited a still life at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine art, and three years later she exhibited a group of three miniatures. Peale decided to specialize in painting miniatures, and by age twenty-six she was fulfilling numerous commissions from citizens of Philadelphia.

During her thirty year career, Peale traveled to Boston, Baltimore and New York to paint portraits. She also visited Washington D.C. with her uncle Charles Willson Peale for several months in 1818 and 1819. While in Washington, the two artists painted many important figures including President Monroe and General Andrew Jackson. In addition to many hours in the studio, their social engagements included breakfast with the president and receptions at the White House.

In 1829, Peale married Reverend William Staughton, moved away from Philadelphia and planned to give up painting. However, her husband died just a few months after the wedding. Peale soon returned to Philadelphia and to an active period of portrait painting. After her second marriage to Brigadier General William Duncan she stopped painting miniatures. Scholars believe she may have continued to make still life paintings, but little is known of these works.

Although her career was interrupted for marriage, Peale completed more than two hundred portraits. She developed her own style often painting with dark rich colors. Her portraits were praised for their accuracy, warmth and liveliness. She earned the respect of Charles Willson Peale who said that his niece attracted more commissions than he did. He also observed that she was required to raise her prices due to overwhelming demand. At times she had so much work to complete she suffered from inflamed eyes and fatigue. The portrait miniature declined in popularity around the same time as Anna Claypoole's career was ending, but she continues to be regarded as one of the leading miniaturists in the United States.

You can view portrait miniatures by Anna Claypoole and other Peale family members in the American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center. Be sure to look for the portrait miniature by Claypoole's niece and student, Mary Anne Simes.

To read more about Anna Claypoole Peale and the Peale family look for the following book at a library or bookstore: Lillian B. Miller's The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy 1770-1870.

Our New Museum Stores March 15, 2013

American Art and the Portrait Gallery share not only a building but also our museum stores. We have two stores that are now under new management with a completely new array of gifts and merchandise that is collection-based. Writer Warren Perry, at the National Portrait Gallery recently spoke with Milissa Ferrari, the new manager of our stores. If you’re in town come by and peruse the offerings. Our main building store is located just off the G Street lobby. The shop at our Renwick Gallery, across from the White House, features many artisan made gifts.

Milissa Ferrari in front of renovated museum store. Photo by Ben Bloom.

Warren Perry: Please tell us about your career and education.

Milissa Ferrari: I have a BA in art history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a student I ran the art galleries for the student unions at the university. After graduating, I helped to open the Madison Civic Center—which housed two theaters and the Madison Art Center—working as the outreach and volunteer coordinator as well as house manager. I moved on to the Dallas Opera in Texas, where I worked in the marketing department, then on to become director of the Learning Annex (a national adult education program) in Chicago. After taking a brief time off to have my two children, I began a new career in retail with Williams-Sonoma while still working on various art education programs through various school districts and serving on local arts councils. I was able to combine both my arts and retail experience in my next job as the store manager for the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. After three years in Portland, I am now here as the store director for the two gift shops located in the building for the National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, as well as the Renwick Gallery.

WP: What is your vision for the museums' store?

MF: My vision for this store is that it becomes a destination shopping spot for the neighborhood and a wonderful surprise for all visitors. My hope is that it will appeal to the more serious art lover through our collection of art related books and monographs and yet also to the novice, with products inspired by works from the collection and the other beautiful, whimsical, and wonderful things we offer in the shop.

WP: Do you have some favorite works in the collections?

MF:I have very diverse taste in art. My new favorite works from the collection include the beautiful watercolors by Till Freiwald, I am always drawn in by them. I also love William H. Johnson's work and George Nakashima's beautiful wood pieces. Also, I really like the portrait of Pocahontas [from the Portrait Gallery's American Origins exhibition].

WP: How do you like Washington, DC?

MF:I'm very lucky to have lived a rather nomadic life. I have lived in many big cities. Washington is a wonderful and sunny change from my last three years in Portland. I am living very close to the two museums and love that I have so many wonderful things to do and see all within walking distance. I don't have a car and am so pleased to be able to hop on the Metro or even the Circulator to get around town. I am very happy with my move here and have already reached a comfort level that usually takes a bit longer than the two months I've been here so far.

WP: Can you tell us about some of your hobbies or interests?

MF:I am a big foodie, for one thing. I have been eating my way around town, always looking for good food wherever it might be found. My second passion is music. I love to hear live performances in small settings. I haven't really found any place for that yet but I'm open to suggestions. I am an adventurer, so if anyone has thoughts on a neighborhood I should be walking around, a market I should go to, please stop in the shop and give me your suggestions. Guidebooks are ok for the casual tourist but I would rather have the inside scoop from those who know.

A Civil War Wikipedia Edit-a-thon! March 14, 2013

Photograph by Mary Tait, Smithsonian American Art Museum

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, via Wikimedia Commons

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has been working with the D.C. Wikimedia community to share our collections and research resources on Wikipedia. Wikipedia includes more than 22 million articles (in 285 languages!) and is visited by more than 470 million people each month, making it one of the largest reference websites in the world. All of the content is created, edited, and refined by volunteers—people who are passionate about sharing their knowledge and helping to improve and expand this heavily-used resource. The museum, committed to sharing our artworks with as many people as we can, is eager to connect with this huge online asset.

Last month, we held a full-day "edit-a-thon" inspired by The Civil War and American Art exhibition. The day began with coffee and introductions, followed by a tutorial on Wikipedia for new editors. Exhibition curator Eleanor Harvey gave a tour of the exhibition, sharing her depth of knowledge about the artworks on view. After lunch, the work began! The museum provided books, research files, and digital resources about selected artworks and artists from the exhibition, and the volunteers set to work using these to add and expand related articles on Wikipedia. We also added high resolution images of the artworks to the Wikimedia Commons, so that they could be easily used to illustrate the articles. You can see more photographs from the day on the Commons, and can find a full report of the work that we did on the edit-a-thon page.

We plan to hold regular Wikipedia edit-a-thons at the Museum, so if you have an idea for a topic, collection, or theme for us to focus on - be sure to let us know in the comments!

The Civil War and American Art: Six Questions for "Materialist Poet" Dario Robleto March 12, 2013

In conjunction with our exhibition, The Civil War and American Art, the museum has invited four contemporary artists to discuss "Why the Civil War Still Matters to American Artists." This panel discussion will be moderated by Senior Curator Eleanor Harvey on Wednesday, March 13 at 4 p.m. in the museum's McEvoy Auditorium. Harvey had a chance to speak with one of the artists about his work: Dario Robleto.

Dario Robleto, The Southern Diarists Society, 2006, 45 x 37 x 6 in., Homemade paper (pulp made from brides' letters to soldiers from various wars, ink retrieved from letters, cotton), colored paper, fabric and thread from soldiers' uniforms from various wars, hair flowers braided by war widows, mourning dress fabric, silk, ribbon, lace, cartes de visite, antique buttons, excavated shrapnel and melted bullet lead from various battlefields

Eye Level: You title your body of work "An Instinct Toward Life" (and detail), and in those artworks you deal with experiences of trauma and loss, but also the endurance of the human spirit. Can you talk a bit about how you went about embedding those experiences in these works?

Dario Robleto: I am a big believer in using the actual materials of war when trying to address such a difficult topic. Referencing just doesn't cut it for me. So there is a literal embodiment, at a material level, of the very substances that caused the trauma or loss but also the redemption. Things like excavated bullet lead, that more than likely caused a wound, but also things like lockets of hair that would be braided into elaborate "hair flowers" or mourning jewelry, that were efforts by the families of the lost to somehow mourn, and, most importantly, remember the loved one. Beyond the materials, the historical stories I made sculptural responses to were ones that reflected this spirit of survival and endurance. Stories often forgotten about in the larger narratives of war. Things like how a whole generation of men in the Civil War, who had just experienced an unprecedented level of war related amputations, would respond to the simple act of wanting to walk your daughter down the wedding aisle. How they did respond, and pointing the spotlight on moments like that, embody an important part of remembering the war as much as any statistic will reveal.

EL: What drew you to this topic, and these materials—Civil War prosthetics, human bones, glass eyes, medical implements, war-related ribbons and photographs, and the like?

DR: After 9/11 my work made a drastic shift in focus. Everyone remembers the question in the immediate aftermath was "why?" As an artist I had to ask some serious questions about what the role of the artist and art was in a moment like this. Could art say anything meaningful in the face of such tragedy? Of course [Arthur] Danto gave this point a new kind of urgency in the face of the Holocaust but I needed to know for myself and if anything had changed since that horrible moment. I decided that I would not look away from the problem until I felt I had got somewhere. I had no idea that over 10 years later, and several dozens of works, I would still be clawing away at it. Of course, now I realize probably nothing less than a lifetime should be devoted to such questions. One of the handful of points I feel I understand better is that if you are going to talk about war in any serious and respectful way I feel you cannot blink or look away from the actual realities of the battlefield. And one of those realities is that the destruction of the body and the mind can be so devastatingly complete that only dust is left. No other solution seemed right except to account for that dust as an actual material in the work. There can be the hope that the poetic can act as some sort of balm to the wounds of war, but when it came to selecting materials I felt there was no hope for emotional honesty unless you use the actual materials of war.

Dario Robleto, No One Has a Monopoly Over Sorrow (and detail), 2005, 10 x 11 x 8 in., Men's wedding ring finger bones coated in melted bullet lead from various American wars, men's wedding bands excavated from American battlefields, melted shrapnel, wax-dipped preserved bridal bouquets of roses and white calla lilies from various eras, dried chrysanthemums, male hair flowers braided by a Civil War widow, fragments from a mourning dress, cold cast brass, bronze, zinc, silver, rust, mahogany, glass

EL: How do you describe the distinction between memory and memorial?

DR: Memorials can allow us to preserve something, safely resting in the past. They allow us a place to focus our thoughts and emotions but with a growing distance from the present tense. This is very important for our needs to show respect and be reminded of others' struggles. But, and maybe this is a distinction that only matters when you're working in the field of memory, the living also need a type of memory that is active, that matters right now and tomorrow. This "active memory" is the type that matters to me day to day because I feel the responsibility, the urgency, to not drop the baton I feel is handed down over and over as an act of generational collaboration. So, in a sense, this type of memory never grows distant because it is affecting change right now.

EL: I love that your medium lines become complex narratives. How do you envision the relationship between the description of the work, and the work itself?

DR: I like to describe myself as a "materialist poet." I invented this term to better explain just how important the role of text is to my work. It is on absolute equal footing as the object. This is often misunderstood in my work as a distraction or somehow a weakness of the object that it needs this accompanying text. This is completely missing the point that the work is about the intersection of materials and language. In fact, language and poetry are so important that the majority of the time the title and material list lines come before the making of the object. I often have no idea what i'm going to make until I have completely worked out these short poems and they have satisfied me as language. For example "male wedding ring finger bones coated in melted bullet lead," is something written by me for the sake of language and then I find a way to give life to these words in materials and objects. So, for me, as the maker, one can't exist without the other. Some ways a viewer could choose to look at them are as short poems, abstract narratives, ingredient lists or liner notes and lyric sheets. I work hard on balancing them between literal descriptions and mystery and hopefully this tension raises even more questions in the viewer.

EL: What is the role of music in these war-themed pieces?

DR: My background as a passionate music fan and long investment in DJ culture informs all my work no matter the topic. The types of singers and music I am drawn to are the ones that evoke great emotional responses that at different moments in our lives can even be forms of survival. Anyone who has ever lost someone or been through a terrible break-up or fallen dangerously in love will understand the role music can play in keeping you moving forward. The power of music in letting you know you are not the only one who has ever felt this way will never loose its relevance in displaying the power of empathy. This thinking was vital to have in place when I began the war related work as another tool in trying to ask how art can help in any way to mend the emotional wounds of war.

EL: If you have a favorite piece, for whatever reason, which speaks to you most compellingly?

DR: Favorite is hard to say but the piece I grappled with the most is a piece called No One Has A Monopoly Over Sorrow. Because of the nature of the materials and the story that motivated the work, I had to dig deeper than ever before to ask if this was all worth it. Every artist needs to reach a moment when you honestly confront the purpose of what you are doing. If you cannot answer this then I think you should not continue. Especially on a topic such as war. This piece will always have a special connection to me because I felt I had to change if I was going to do it. It raised in me a question that I still use today and that has become a guiding principal for all my work which is, "What do I need to do to earn the respect of this material and story?" If I do not feel I have earned this respect then I will not proceed. How I earn it varies from each piece and is a long, personal answer that I wouldn't do justice to in this short space. But it is something I fight to earn everyday.

Picture This: An American in London, George Catlin and His Indian Gallery March 8, 2013

Our George Catlin paintings on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Photo courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

One of the highlights of our American Art collection are the over 400 artworks in 19th century painter George Catlin's original Indian Gallery. Catlin's work captured the "manners and customs" of Plains Indian tribes in the 1830s. The work has been on display here and throughout the country in a number of incarnations from a traveling exhibition in 2003-2004, online as an educational website, and a book.

For the first time since the 1840s fifty-five of Catlin's paintings are being exhibited in Europe at Great Britain's National Portrait Gallery. The show opened earlier this week and will run through June 2013 when it will travel to the UK's Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.