Lot 17: Rubens Peale (1784-1864)

Partridges in a Landscape signed 'Rubens Peale' (lower right) oil on canvas 201/4 x 27 in. (51.5 x 68.6 cm) PROVENANCE Private collection, Greenwich, Connecticut, acquired circa 1935. By descent in the family to the present owner. NOTES One of Charles Willson Peale's seventeen children, Rubens Peale was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1784. His entire professional career was dedicated to museum work, and it was not until he retired that he undertook art courses, and "with the help of his daughter Mary Jane, he produced a good-size oeuvre of still lifes and landscapes." (L.B. Miller, The Peale Family, Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870, New York, 1996, p. 38). More than many formal art schools or movements, the distinguished Peale family of artists contributed to the history of American painting not only in the scope of work it produced, but in the innovation and new directions that it brought to American art. Lillian Miller notes, "In subject matter, the Peales' work followed changes in taste that took place in America in the nineteenth century, from portraiture to history, which in some works approached anecdotal or genre art, to landscape and still life, as Americans discovered the nature of their land and its rich promise. Through a study of the Peales' art, we can trace the course of American painting as it made its way out of its colonial, British-oriented beginnings to a more national expression under the impact of political and social change in America; Charles Willson Peale's early radicalism and democratic inclinations, his willingness to innovate and experiment, his optimistic sense of unlimited opportunity, his commitment to republican ideology and principles, his interest in natural history, public education and the museum, and his familial relationships -- all were transferred to his children, who dared new horizons and new artistic and scientific practices." ( The Peale Family, Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870, p. 10) Despite a late start at painting, Rubens was an extremely accomplished artist. There is no doubt that "his rapid progress in learning the craft of painting was facilitated by his lifelong exposure to the painting traditions of his family and the knowledge he had gleaned from the art exhibitions he personally had organized at his Baltimore and New York museums and those he attended from time to time in Philadelphia and elsewhere." (P.D. Schweizer, "Fruits of Perseverance, The Art of Rubens Peale, 1855-1865" in The Peale Family, Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870, p. 170) Many of the paintings that Rubens Peale produced were direct copies of compositions by family members James and Raphaelle Peale. In addition to these, his original works are divided between landscapes, still lifes and bird paintings. Perhaps the most original of all of the three types, the bird paintings were not derivative of the work of Rubens's relatives. Although the direct impetus for their origin is not documented, we know that "sometime between March 22, 1861 and November 11, 1864, Rubens began painting Bobwhite Quail in a Landscape, one of a series of fourteen bird pictures he had started during the summer of 1860. Rubens painted the most characteristic type in this series in 1861, when he completed 'Mrs. Peale's Happy Family of Partridges'. He completed the last picture in the series in early June 1865, about five weeks before he died. Neither his father, uncle, nor older brothers painted game pictures, although his younger brother Titian Ramsay did, late in his painting career. Rubens's exploration of this type of subject matter reveals his growing confidence as a painter during the 1860s. All of the works in the series depict live game birds in naturalistic settings which, in at least two instances, included representations of moss, ferns, laurel, and rhododendron branches, and a variety of other small plants that Mrs. Peale had gathered in the woods and brought to her husband's studio. Rubens's interest in subject matter appropriate to an out-of-door setting parallels the general tendency that emerged in the 1860s for displaying still-life subjects in natural surroundings. In another respect, the game pictures replicate the pictorial formula of his still-life paintings in their depictions of the subjects on a flat surface near the picture plane, in front of a shallow background." (P.D. Schweizer, "Fruits of Perseverance, The Art of Rubens Peale, 1855-1865" in The Peale Family, Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870, pp. 179-80) It would be easy to assume that the art of Rubens Peale was directly related to the work of his accomplished father, but Paul Schweizer has pointed out that Rubens's professional life was in museum work. In fact, "Rubens was not taught the art of painting by Charles Willson Peale as were Raphaelle and James, nor did he emulate his father's effort to paint lofty subject matter. Rather, the most important lesson Rubens received from Charles Willson Peale was the example of industry and ambition in old age. Charles Willson believed that happiness in life depended on the cultivation of the mind, and Rubens's decision to take up painting late in life indicates his belief in that principle." ("Fruits of Perseverance, The Art of Rubens Peale, 1855-1865" in The Peale Family, Creation of a Legacy, 1770-1870, p. 172) Thus, painting had a much more personal meaning for Rubens Peale. In fact, most of the paintings he created were given as gifts to family and friends, perhaps more important for the therapeutic powers they bestowed on the painter than anything else.