Analysis Of Charles Wilson Peale's The Artist In His Museum

Everyone perceives the role of the artist, whether it is a teacher, historian, visualizer, or innovator, and their art as something entirely different from the next. Charles Wilson Peale and William Sydney Mount present the profession of an artist as one of a welcoming educator in The Artist in His Museum and The Painter’s Triumph. However, Peale’s depiction of the artist is that of a revealer of history to an upper class audience where as Mount showcases a showman displaying evolved, less traditional art to the common man. In The Artist in His Museum, Peale portrays the artist as an exposer. The museum curator is pulling back a bright red curtain in an effort to reveal his museum to the audience. He has a welcoming hand gesture, inviting

He wanted his audience to fund his museum, so he had to display all the possibilities one attains from visiting his museum. Additionally, he wanted viewers to visualize art as not only a means of memorialization of a patron’s ideas. Peale includes high-class audience members in his painting to suggest that those of higher status are the recipients of art’s pleasure. Suits and dresses bathe over them as if looking at art is an important affair. However, since Peale is opening the curtain to his museum, he is allowing for the common public to gain a glimpse into the high class world of art viewing. Mount, on the other hand, is saying that the common individual is art’s main spectator. He paints a farmer as the one enjoying whatever exists behind the canvas. He is making art seem more accessible and able to provide delight to a wider audience. Furthermore, the artist and the farmer have similar facial features, placing them on an equal playing field. The farmer’s expression, however, is not too intelligent and is reminiscent of how a child looks at things. Through this, Mount is speaking to the idea that audience members do not need to be of high status or high class to look at art. Viewers can be simple people and still be an appreciator of