'Art conceal'd': Peale's double portrait of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming

The letter, in fact, appears to summarize Peale's thoughts in response to Reynolds's Second and Third Discourses. These lectures were delivered to the students at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, on December 11, 1769, and December 14, 1770, and published almost immediately, in 1769 and 1771 respectively.(104) The subject was the ideal education of an artist. In his Second Discourse Reynolds advised the student to begin by mastering the rudiments of art, including a facility in drawing, a "tolerable readiness in the management of colours," and a knowledge of composition. Then, said Reynolds, the young artist could enter the second period of study, to learn "all that has been known and done before his own time," and could study "a variety of models."(105) Peale, in his letter to Bordley, was perhaps referring to this advice when he wrote: "I have not the Execution, have not the ability, or am I a Master of Drawing - what little I do is by mear immatation of what is before me, perhaps I have a good Eye, that is all, and not halt the application that I now think is necessary." In the final stage, according to Reynolds, the student "will consider and separate those different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their original." Peale perhaps rephrased this when he wrote that "a good painter must . . . account for every beauty, must know the original cause of beauty - in all he sees." In his Third Discourse Reynolds talked in more detail of the "great style," which would not depend on nature, with its blemishes and defects, but on an ideal beauty, learned from studying the works of the Ancients.(106) Peale perhaps alluded to this in the comment: "a good painter of either portrait or History, must be well acquainted with the Greesian and Roman statues to be able to draw them at pleasure by memory." In both lectures, Reynolds advised the student to work toward an ideal through study and knowledge of the art of earlier masters. Peale's response was: "but as I have variety of Characters to paint I must as Rambrant did make these my Anticks and improve myself as well as I can while I am provideing for my support." The letter is early evidence that Peale was aware of Reynolds's advice about the role of the ideal in art. Later confirmation is found in a letter that John Adams wrote on August 21, 1776, to his wife, Abigail, after visiting Peale in Philadelphia: "Peale shewed me some Books upon the Art of Painting, among the rest one by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the President of the English Accademy of Painters." Adams also commented to his wife that Peale showed him "a Variety of rough Drawings, made by great Masters in Italy, which he keeps as Modells."(107) This indicates that Peale in fact had examples of ideal models for his American work, which may not have been entirely based, as he claimed, on the "mear immatation of what is before me."

Like the letter to Bordley, the portrait of the Lamings may be a telling instance of Peale's conscious simplicity. It conveys a conversance with sophisticated, educated culture while maintaining an ostensible naivete. The painting suggests that Peale saw no dichotomy in this. In fact, the expression of thematic content through a seemingly realistic portrayal should be viewed as a high achievement in the appearance of artlessness that was so admired in the painter's day. The conceit has largely gone unnoticed by a modern audience not attuned to it. Perhaps Peale would count it a success in "the supreme art of the designer" that he portrayed the Laming couple "in so easy a manner, that the careless observer, tho' he be taken with the symmetry of the whole, discovers no art in the combination."(108)