TitleSelf-Portrait
Artist
John Thomas Peele
(1822 - 1897)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 27 7/8 × 24 in.
Framed: 33 1/4 × 29 3/8 × 1 1/4 in.
SubmissionANA diploma presentation
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number989-P
Label TextThe critic of The Literary World in commenting on the Academy annual exhibition of 1847, summarily dismissed this work with: "This portrait of Mr. Peele, by himself, is a very fair likeness nothing more, and is painted with considerable skill. The flesh is somewhat dry and opaque, and the background is in bad taste, inasmuch as it detracts from the figure." The choice of an outdoor setting for a portrait was unusual, but hardly unprecedented; it certainly was a favorite devise of the most prominent English portraitist of the late eighteenth century. For an artist to present himself in such a setting, however, was to suggest that his subject specialty was landscape. Such was not the case with Peele, yet he often posed his idealized genre groups against landscape vignettes, and perhaps, placed himself in such a leafy setting from habit.
