One of the first paintings on view in Securing the Shadow comes from Philadelphia. In a few short months, half the population of the City of Brotherly Love was wiped out.Ĭharles Willson Peale, Rachel Weeping), 1776 The dreaded Yellow Fever killed 5,000 people in Philadelphia in 1793. Yet sudden outbreaks of disease could strike anywhere. Temperate regions like Pennsylvania tended to be healthier than Tidewater Virginia or bitterly cold New England. On average, five of these children would likely die before reaching adolescence.
Well into the nineteenth century, the number of babies born into an American family normally ranged between eight to ten. People in early America were well aware of Death - and not just because of the New England Primer prayer. Several paintings belong to a second category, begun when the subjects were hale and hearty, only to be finished after Death had snatched them away. Many of the works are posthumous portraits, painted after the moment of death. The paintings in Securing the Shadow all portray deceased people, for the most part children.
Look about the gallery walls of the American Folk Art Museum and you will come to understand why Death was acknowledged each long-ago night. To modern sensibilities, The New England Primer prayer may seem morbid, indeed harmful to a young child. Instead, the sobering prayer from The New England Primer was chanted, sing-song, for nearly two hundred years:Ī profoundly moving exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City provides insight into the haunting presence of Death during the colonial era and the formative years of the American Republic. Teddy bears and fairy tales were not part of the bedtime ritual of children in early America.
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