Charles Wilson Peale: Where Art Met Science
A MONA Moment |
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In the collection of the Museum of Nebraska Art, an oil painting by Titian Peale provides a direct connection to the founder of America's first museum, Charles Wilson Peale. Art Historian Robert Hughes describes the elder Peale as "a provincial Leonardo, a homegrown Cecil B. DeMille . . .the very archetype of all those . . .cultural entrepreneurs who have struggled since to bring their ideas of progress to the world."
We see Charles Wilson Peale in his 1822 self portrait, The Artist in his Museum, lifting a curtain, dramatically revealing the long gallery of cases filled with stuffed bird specimens surmounted by a song row of portraits of revolutionary war heroes and Philadelphia society. In the foreground sits the jaw of the Mastodon excavated by Peale and his son Raphael-the first complete mastodon skeleton unearthed in America. In an early manifestation of the blockbuster museum exhibition, the Peale's carted the bones to their museum and threw a dinner party under its huge rib cage.
His showmanship in no way undercut the scientific mission of his museum. His goals were idealistic, educational, and dedicated to advancing virtue, the common good of the public, and science.
"As this is an age of discovery," he wrote, "every experiment that brings to light the properties of natural substances helps to expand the mind and make men better, more virtuous, and liberal; and, what is of infinite importance in our country, creates a fondness for finding the treasure contained in the bowels of the earth that might otherwise be lost."
Peale was the first American artist to explore and expand the territory where art meets science. Peale's son, Titian, would in his own work continue this exploration in a work in the collection of the Museum of Nebraska Art. In our next MONA Moment we will examine this work, Buffalo Hunt in the Platte Valley.
