Posted on Monday, 12 December 2011

art-history: William Sidney Mount Bargaining for a Horse  1835 Oil on canvas  24 x 30 in New-York Historical Society  During the 1830s, Mount was the leading genre painter in America. His anecdotal scenes of country life enjoyed the patronage of wealthy collectors and the general public alike. Newspaper and magazine reviewers lavished praise on him for his talent and observant wit. The art historian Elizabeth Johns has argued that Mount’s contemporaries also understood his works to be visual puns that alluded to the politics of the day. Thus two bartering men in Bargaining for a Horse (1835) played on the expression “horse trading,” slang for political wheeling and dealing.  —Angela L. Miller, et al., American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity (2008)

art-history:

William Sidney Mount 
Bargaining for a Horse  1835 
Oil on canvas  24 x 30 in
New-York Historical Society 

During the 1830s, Mount was the leading genre painter in America. His anecdotal scenes of country life enjoyed the patronage of wealthy collectors and the general public alike. Newspaper and magazine reviewers lavished praise on him for his talent and observant wit. The art historian Elizabeth Johns has argued that Mount’s contemporaries also understood his works to be visual puns that alluded to the politics of the day. Thus two bartering men in Bargaining for a Horse (1835) played on the expression “horse trading,” slang for political wheeling and dealing. 

—Angela L. Miller, et al., American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity (2008)

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