Born, Wolfgang: Still-life painting in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947)

OMANTICISM in one form or another was the

E leading influence in American art from Wash-

ington Allston to the latest representatives of

the Hudson River School, but the persistence of the

Peale tradition and the best work of the period demon-

strates that romanticism was not the only school with
important artistic values.

James Peale’s objectivism corresponds to the survival
of eighteenth-century rationalism; and the primitives
represent the survival of the craftsman’s spirit in a
young, not fully industrialized society. Still another
group of painters produced an important body of work,
which demands examination on its own terms, for it
is distinguished by what may be called ‘heightened’
realism.

As early as 1823, Raphaelle Peale's After the Bath
showed a marked tendency to revive the trompe I'ceil.
In the foreground a towel is thrown into relief to pro-
duce a tangible quality. However, Raphaelle Peale
was not the only painter in America who clung to the
tradition of the trompe Vœil after it had been aban-
doned in Europe. In fact, an undercurrent of trompe
Vœil painting can be traced all through the second
quarter of the nineteenth century. This current eventu-
ally broadened and progressed from a latent to a mani-
fest role in the second half of the century, transcend-
ing the doctrinal character of its beginnings. The re-
sult was an illusionistic art that applied the heightened
realism of the trompe U'ceil to still-life motifs generally.

An anonymous trompe U'ceil dating from 1827 has
been attributed to an otherwise unknown painter,
Nathaniel Peck, on the basis of the address of a letter
seen in the picture (fig. 67). The painting was found
in Flushing, New York, and probably is of local origin.
This is most astonishing, since the picture is a reinter-
pretation of Vaillant's Letter Rack (fig. 3), and
would imply that a painter in a small community out-
side of New York was familiar with the work of a

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seventeenth-century Flemish painter. However, since
trompe lœils had been popular with European painters
all through the eighteenth century, it is reasonable to
assume that this letter-rack type was familiar to Amer-
ican painters early in the nineteenth century through
copies and reproductions. Nathaniel Peck’s version
differs from the European because of a strange peculiar-
ity: an eye like those seen in ritual decorations of Free-
masons is painted on the letter rack. This motif sug-
gested to its rediscoverers the name, The All-Seeing
Eye.

In the picture two letters and some printed matter,
a folder with cigars, a bow, a vial, a coin, and two keys
are tied to the wall by a tape. The letters are addressed
to people in New York and Flushing, where Peck
resided. The printed matter consists of a New York
newspaper, a booklet on what seems to be crystal
gazing; and an almanac of the popular variety known
for its astrological information. The painting technique
is illusionistic, but not subtle. It suggests the amateur-
ishly trained rather than a professional painter as its
author. Nothing is known of the artist except his name.
He seems to have been interested in abstruse sciences,
and to have intended, with the combination of hetero-
geneous objects with the eye of God in trompe l'ceil,
to convey the feeling that even the most humble
object has a transcendental significance. It will be re-
called that the German mystic Jacob Boehme, a shoe-
maker by profession, experienced his spiritual illumina-
tion by looking into a glass ball. In the old workshop
of his trade, the ball served to concentrate light on
tools.

Three years after The All-Seeing Eye was painted,
a young portrait painter, Charles B. King, painted
a trompe Fœil known under the title of Vanity of an
Artist's Dream (fig. 69). King was born in Newport,
Rhode Island, in 1785 or 1786 and was one of the
last students of Benjamin West in London. He be-