American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915

Resources like Google Images and the Met’s Collection Database provide instant access to images of a vast array of objects. But before photography—not to mention the Internet—audiences relied on prints to see images of contemporary and historical works of art. In fact, many of the paintings in American Stories also exist as prints, sometimes in thousands of impressions. In today’s post, I’ll consider how some of the works in the exhibition entered into the broader consciousness through a variety of printed forms. Read more »

With Thanksgiving approaching, I want to dedicate this week’s post to paintings in the exhibition that feature or reference food and drink. In some examples, food appears as a symbolic element, such as in the portrait of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming—discussed in “Old Friends in a New Light”—where the peaches resting on Mrs. Laming’s lap suggest fecundity and fertility. The portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley also falls into this category, as the teapot alludes to contemporary political anxieties over the Townshend Acts and the tax on tea. Read more »