![]() It was created in a period when the utility of visual perception was publicly debated and was paralleled by partisan insistence on political transparency (both in person and in print). Its placement in this location, where it became an important part of the Columbianum exhibition, literally gave it a simultaneous artistic and political visibility. Bellion is able to give ample historical examples of the importance of appearance and the act of looking, noting that even George Washington was guilty of “gazing, in mute unutterable admiration” (9) of course that term gaze has greater weight and gender implications today than it did in nineteenth-century American life.Ĭhapter 2, The Politics of Discernment, takes as its focus Charles Willson Peale’s Staircase Group, of 1795 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), whose trompe l’oeil illusion was heightened and blurred into the architecture of the Pennsylvania State House with the addition of a real step and doorframe. Optical illusions and pleasures also existed in the form of painted storefronts and shop signs, as well as displays of an ever-wider range of goods. ![]() But the author also alludes to the increasing conversations, held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, about truth and beauty that art posed. The illusion allowed the viewer to become undeceived, a way of recovering personal agency. To some “Art” was suspected as a frivolous and expensive pursuit capable of creating political illusions, but also capable of illustrating moral examples. It had a diverse population and burgeoning print and economic cultures. ![]() Why was Philadelphia the center? This city held both Revolutionary and Continental congresses and was, in the 1790s, the seat of the federal government, thus a place that fostered and publicized political debates. Less well known, but still significant to the study, is Charles and Titian’s watercolor depiction of The Long Room, Interior of the Front Room in Peale’s Museum (also 1822, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit), whose sharp single-point perspective was later heightened by its pairing with a piece of optical equipment (a small “cosmorama”) in the museum, creating an early type of illusionistic virtual space.Ĭhapter 1, Theaters of Visuality, moves back in time to explain that by the eighteenth century, Philadelphia already had a strong culture of “looking”, fostered by microscopes, camera obscuras, and magic lanterns. The purveyors of visual deception similarly operated in a space where artistry, science, and pure showmanship overlapped.Īs one would expect, the book opens with a discussion of Charles Willson Peale’s iconic painting Artist in His Museum (1822, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia), which captures a retrospective of his pursuits in both art and natural history, and highlights, through its representation of visitors to the museum enacting awe, curiosity, and intellectual enlightenment. Importantly this education of the senses took place in a multitude of spaces capable of separating social classes and political affiliations: taverns, gardens, museums and national exhibitions. ![]() Explored together, these three categories of objects (none of which originated in nineteenth-century America) nonetheless helped develop a shared visual literacy among Americans who did not necessarily share a common verbal language. The author explores the cultural function of visual perception and deception articulated in trompe l’oeil paintings (hyper-realistic oil paintings designed to visually “fool the eye”), optical devices intended to aid vision, and spectacular hoaxes. Wendy Bellion, associate professor of art history at the University of Delaware, centers her study within the history and politics of Philadelphia by focusing on the natural history museum and the art of the Peale family (Charles, Titian, Rembrandt, and Raphaelle). Wendy Bellion, Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion & Visual Perception in Early National America.Ĭhapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011.ģ88 pp.
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