Lot Essay
Among the first generation of American genre painters, James Goodwyn Clonney immigrated from Liverpool, England, by 1830 when he was working for a New York lithographic firm. He studied at the National Academy of Design and began exhibiting portraits and landscapes there as an associate member in 1834. In 1841, he started showing genre scenes at the NAD and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as well as the American Art-Union, where the present work was exhibited in 1850.
Clonney focused primarily on outdoor subjects that at first appear to be simply charming scenes of rural life, but also feature symbolic references to the politics of pre-Civil War America. The Trappers adapts a subject explored by William Sidney Mount in his Catching Rabbits of 1839 (The Long Island Museum, Stonybrook, New York). However, Clonney notably adds an interracial relationship in his work, updating the standing hunter triumphantly holding the day's haul to be a Black figure. Elizabeth Johns writes of Clonney's works featuring a racial element, "Almost always, he produced these works after a significant political decision or event...Within about eighteen months of the [Missouri] Compromise of 1850, in fact, Clonney did at least three paintings on the domination of American politics by slavery. While argument raged in Congress, he exhibited Trappers at the American Art-Union...Moving beyond Mount's treatments of the colloquialism—which suggested in Catching Rabbits that political rhetoric literally traps runaway voters—Clonney proposed with imagery that [slavery] is the controlling motif of politics." (American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life, New Haven, Connecticut, 1991, p. 110)
Four pencil studies for The Trappers are in the Karolik Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Clonney focused primarily on outdoor subjects that at first appear to be simply charming scenes of rural life, but also feature symbolic references to the politics of pre-Civil War America. The Trappers adapts a subject explored by William Sidney Mount in his Catching Rabbits of 1839 (The Long Island Museum, Stonybrook, New York). However, Clonney notably adds an interracial relationship in his work, updating the standing hunter triumphantly holding the day's haul to be a Black figure. Elizabeth Johns writes of Clonney's works featuring a racial element, "Almost always, he produced these works after a significant political decision or event...Within about eighteen months of the [Missouri] Compromise of 1850, in fact, Clonney did at least three paintings on the domination of American politics by slavery. While argument raged in Congress, he exhibited Trappers at the American Art-Union...Moving beyond Mount's treatments of the colloquialism—which suggested in Catching Rabbits that political rhetoric literally traps runaway voters—Clonney proposed with imagery that [slavery] is the controlling motif of politics." (American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life, New Haven, Connecticut, 1991, p. 110)
Four pencil studies for The Trappers are in the Karolik Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.