Works
In 1801, Rembrandt painted a portrait of his brother Rubens, youngest of the six Peale children, who always had an admiration for gardening and tending to natural life. Rembrandt seated his brother next to a geranium. The painting signifies the artist’s admiration for a sibling’s love of nature, and may have been inspired by the Dutch 17th century artist, David Teniers the Younger, who had painted a series of oil-on-copper paintings representing the five senses. His painting, "Smell" is quite similar to Rembrandt Peale’s. Rembrandt's piece captures the essence of a young gardener/artist’s peace of mind, gracefully looking out, a posture of wonder and calmness.
In 1824 Peale painted the Patriæ Pater, in which a rectangle supporting an oval wreath surrounds the eye-catching image of George Washington. The most successful painting of Peale's 50-year career, it inspired John Marshall to have his portrait done by Peale in the same fashion. The painting was criticized as lacking authenticity, as it was not completed until after Washington's death (1799). Nonetheless, Peale received commendations for his portrait by many noted politicians such as Washington’s nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington, who was an associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and Marshall.
Peale's neoclassical painting The Roman Daughter depicts a young girl shielding her father, a prisoner in chains, and feeding him from her breast. This piece demonstrates compassion and graceful defense; his copy of Correggio's Angel, and his immense allegorical painting, Court of Death (1820), reveal the same artistic style.
Read more about this topic: Rembrandt Peale, Biography
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)