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America's Old Masters
vitality that some critics regard these pictures as
his best. After years of studying the more suave canvases of his juniors, Peale, it is true, had lost most
of the awkwardness of his style, but it seems to this writer that he had also lost the sharpness.of his
personal vision. Excellent examples of the more sophisticated painting being done in America at that time,
they are not outstanding examples; they lack the individual approach which made his early pictures
fascinating. Yet when we consider that they were painted by a septuagenarian in a new style learned from
his son, they must be regarded as one of the most amazing phenomena of American-art.
VI
In 1813
Jefferson, now retired from the Presidency, heard that Peale had taken up a new hobby. "It is long, my dear
sir, since we have exchanged a letter," he wrote. "Our former correspondence always had some little matter
of business interspersed, but this being at an end, I shall still be anxious to hear from you sometimes and
to know that you are well and happy. I know, indeed, that your system is that of contentment under any
situation. I have heard that you have retired from the city to a farm, and that you give your whole time to
that. Does not the museum suffer? And is the farm as interesting?"
But Jefferson could not really believe that farming could be
uninteresting, "I have often thought," the great statesman continued, "that if heaven had given me choice
of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good
market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,
and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects,, someone always coming to
perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a
continued one through the year. Under a total want of demand, except for our family table, I am still
devoted to the garden, and though an old man I am still but a young gardener."
In order to give his naturalist son Rubens more prominence by
placing him in charge of the museum, and because he believed the arsenic he used to preserve specimens was
at last disastrously undermining his health, Peale had retired
from Philadelphia in 1810 and bought a large farm near
Germantown. "That garden now became my hobby-horse," but though he bought the best stock and implements, it
failed to make money; Peale became so fond of his animals he could not bear to slaughter them, and he hired
too many men. "I wanted to make labour easy, and spared no pains to make machines for very many uses." He
constructed corn-huskers and butter-churners and straw-cutters, but they all cost money and brought in
little, while he was continually employed in fixing them. "Therefore I call them my follies, and great
follies they have been, except that while contriving and making them it afforded me amusement, but to
complete the climax of my follies I wanted a windmill to pump water." Again and again he erected his
structure on the top of a hill, each time with some new safety appliance, but sooner or later a high wind
turned the sails so fast that the whole edifice came tumbling down. The.children of his second marriage, who
thought their'father'should retire into a decorous old age, were infuriated by his perpetual tinkering: by
the way he rushed out in every storm to watch his mill, by the loud crash that soon followed, and by the
return of the drenched, discouraged old man, and above all by the renewed cheerfulness of the next morning
that set Peale to tinkering again.