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拍品专文
Exemplary in its scale, detail and presence, Sportsman’s Still Life ranks among Boston-native Alexander Pope’s most powerful and engrossing trompe l'oeil paintings. According to Donelson F. Hoopes, the present work is one of the artist’s approximately a dozen “characteristic pieces.” Defined by Hoopes as “paintings in oil of objects represented in the manner of the hunting trophy,” the author explains, “Pope’s ‘characteristic pieces,’ the illusionistic still-life paintings, are the least numerous of his works; yet, by today’s standards, they are his greatest achievements.” (“Alexander Pope: Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” The Brooklyn Museum Annual, vol. 8, 1966-67, p. 137) Other notable examples of the “characteristic pieces” in institutions include: The Oak Door (1887, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Emblems of the Civil War (1888, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York); Sportsman’s Trophy (1898, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas); and The Wild Swan (1900, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California).
The harmonious arrangement of Sportsman’s Still Life astutely depicts the bounty and tools of an avid outdoorsman. Set against a worn, green wooden wall, the composition’s initial focus is the prized moose antlers at the top of the canvas, at the center of which rest a leather fly wallet and reel, accompaniments to the fly rods above. A sheathed knife also hangs from the antlers at left. Just below, a rifle and shotgun form an X, on which Pope suspends the shooters quarry, quail and grouse. Pope adds unity to the composition by including two objects hanging directly from the wood in each of the upper, left and right quadrants—a flask and playing card above, the sheathed knife and a pipe at left, and a riding quirt and pistol at right.
The artist’s assiduous attention to detail, combined with his astute manipulation of light, results in a masterful illusion that is in fact a “trick of the eye.” As one contemporary critic noted of Pope’s work: “It is one of his favorite pastimes to paint birds, rabbits, etc., hanging to a wall and cause them to stand out so as to deceive the sight and to cause many to desire to see the other side in order to be convinced that they are not real instead of painted objects.” (as quoted in A. Frankenstein, After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters, 1870-1900, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1953, p. 140)
At the lower left of the composition, Pope cleverly signs his signature on a calling card—a motif he commonly employed in similar canvases. Hoopes writes, “In four instances, Pope signed his paintings by means of an additional device, a painted calling card that appears in each case at the lower left edge of the canvas in a diagonal position as if inserted between canvas and frame. Although extremely convincing as an illusion itself, the calling card idea immediately suggests a visual pun, denying the illusion of the still life with a second illusion, since the card seems to be inserted between the picture frame and the painted canvas.” (“Alexander Pope, Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” p. 139).
As noted by William H. Gerdts, "Trompe l'oeil paintings, for the most part, were owned by well-to-do business men often without social pretensions, who enjoyed the great realism of the pictures and were amused by their deceptive qualities." (Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life 1801-1939, Columbia, Missouri, 1981, p. 157) In the same vein as Pope’s contemporaries Richard La Barre Goodwin and William Michael Harnett, Sportsman’s Still Life would have appealed to this demographic for whom hunting for sport was a common hobby. Each artist spoke to the 19th century ideal of the outdoorsman for whom athleticism was critical to ideal manhood. Hoopes explains, “Pope was essentially a hearty, self-reliant, sports-loving, outdoors man, a product of the age of optimism that characterized American life in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Frederic Remington was another, as was Winslow Homer, though hardly so gregarious.” (“Alexander Pope, Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” p. 133)
Emblematic of the artist at the apex of his craft, Sportsman’s Still Life is consummate of Pope's keen attention to detail and mastery of composition. Hoopes explains, “Pope was using the ‘characteristic’…to connote ideas of close observation and faithful rendering of distinctive qualities of visual phenomena. It is for this preoccupation that Pope has emerged, for within this limited field of his interests he is a virtuoso master of painted illusion.” (“Alexander Pope, Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” p. 129)
The harmonious arrangement of Sportsman’s Still Life astutely depicts the bounty and tools of an avid outdoorsman. Set against a worn, green wooden wall, the composition’s initial focus is the prized moose antlers at the top of the canvas, at the center of which rest a leather fly wallet and reel, accompaniments to the fly rods above. A sheathed knife also hangs from the antlers at left. Just below, a rifle and shotgun form an X, on which Pope suspends the shooters quarry, quail and grouse. Pope adds unity to the composition by including two objects hanging directly from the wood in each of the upper, left and right quadrants—a flask and playing card above, the sheathed knife and a pipe at left, and a riding quirt and pistol at right.
The artist’s assiduous attention to detail, combined with his astute manipulation of light, results in a masterful illusion that is in fact a “trick of the eye.” As one contemporary critic noted of Pope’s work: “It is one of his favorite pastimes to paint birds, rabbits, etc., hanging to a wall and cause them to stand out so as to deceive the sight and to cause many to desire to see the other side in order to be convinced that they are not real instead of painted objects.” (as quoted in A. Frankenstein, After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters, 1870-1900, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1953, p. 140)
At the lower left of the composition, Pope cleverly signs his signature on a calling card—a motif he commonly employed in similar canvases. Hoopes writes, “In four instances, Pope signed his paintings by means of an additional device, a painted calling card that appears in each case at the lower left edge of the canvas in a diagonal position as if inserted between canvas and frame. Although extremely convincing as an illusion itself, the calling card idea immediately suggests a visual pun, denying the illusion of the still life with a second illusion, since the card seems to be inserted between the picture frame and the painted canvas.” (“Alexander Pope, Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” p. 139).
As noted by William H. Gerdts, "Trompe l'oeil paintings, for the most part, were owned by well-to-do business men often without social pretensions, who enjoyed the great realism of the pictures and were amused by their deceptive qualities." (Painters of the Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life 1801-1939, Columbia, Missouri, 1981, p. 157) In the same vein as Pope’s contemporaries Richard La Barre Goodwin and William Michael Harnett, Sportsman’s Still Life would have appealed to this demographic for whom hunting for sport was a common hobby. Each artist spoke to the 19th century ideal of the outdoorsman for whom athleticism was critical to ideal manhood. Hoopes explains, “Pope was essentially a hearty, self-reliant, sports-loving, outdoors man, a product of the age of optimism that characterized American life in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Frederic Remington was another, as was Winslow Homer, though hardly so gregarious.” (“Alexander Pope, Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” p. 133)
Emblematic of the artist at the apex of his craft, Sportsman’s Still Life is consummate of Pope's keen attention to detail and mastery of composition. Hoopes explains, “Pope was using the ‘characteristic’…to connote ideas of close observation and faithful rendering of distinctive qualities of visual phenomena. It is for this preoccupation that Pope has emerged, for within this limited field of his interests he is a virtuoso master of painted illusion.” (“Alexander Pope, Painter of ‘Characteristic Pieces,’” p. 129)