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| Catching Rabbits 1839 |
By all accounts not just a visual artist but a musician as well. He composed and collected songs and designed and patented violins.
Mount was one of the first painters to focus on rural, American life.
What attracted me to this painting is that there is enough detail to recreate the rabbit trap and it looks like it would actually work. One wonders about the back-story and the finely dressed dandies who pulled the rabbit out of the trap.
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| The Windmill circa 1858 |
Francis William Edmonds: Born 1806 in New York, died 1863.
Edmonds worked as a bank teller and painted in his spare time. He went to Europe in 1840 for his health.
Many of his paintings showed interiors that are exceptionally spare by today's standards.
What attracted me to this painting was the combination of the child, dog and the man who shared time with them creating a mechanical marvel with little more than some firewood and a sharp knife. That was back when mechanical geniuses sprouted up everywhere like mushrooms after a rain.
There is no doubt that people were much more inventive and creative then than now. Intellectual decline is accelerating dramatically during even my life time.--ken
ReplyDeleteAs I looked at the painting I noticed that with very few changes the rabbit trap was pretty darn close to what we used to use to pick up a few bucks(no pun intended) in my early teens. I assure you the design does work. The kneeling man has just finished putting new bait on the trip trigger to reset the trap.
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