William Sidney Mount, Cider Making (1840)

Link:
Banks, Politics, Hard Cider, and Paint


"It is my conclusion that this
man, a merchant, banker, and literary amateur named
Charles Augustus Davis, commissioned Cider Making
in order to celebrate the stunning victory of the Whig
party over the Jacksonians in the election of I840. It is
my further belief that the picture not only speaks
directly to the event of that election, but contains sym-
bols that were as immediately recognizable to the
American electorate of the time-particularly the New
York section of it-as
in the I950S a button reading I LIKE IKE was."

William Sidney Mount, The Painter's Triumph (1838)

The farmer is identified by his
whip and clothes; hat, neckerchief, vest, and loose-
fitting, cuffed trousers-all in good condition-
denote the prosperous yeoman. In contrast, the
figure of the painter projects the urban, cultured
type in his "indoors" dress: cravat and frilled shirt,
tailed coat, and tapered, tight-fitting pantaloons
with stirrups.6 The contrast establishes that the
farmer is a visitor from the natural, physical world


outside the artificial, intellectual studio world. Al-
though the figures may represent specific individ-
uals, their identities are unimportant. They are
objectified, typecast as character actors. The Paint-
er's Triumph is about William Sidney Mount as
the new American artist type...


Link:
The Painter's Triumph: William Sidney Mount and the Formation of a Middle-Class Art