Provenance
Peale Museum, Philadelphia, by 1817 [1]; M. Thomas & Sons, Auctioneers, Philadelphia (Peale’s Museum Gallery of Oil Paintings, National Portrait and Historical Gallery Illustrative of American History), October 6, 1854, lot 257 (as Cutlet and Vegetables) [2]; Townsend Ward, Philadelphia, 1854; Private collections; Skinner, Inc., Boston, November 11, 1994, lot 69 (as Still Life—Beef and Cabbage); Schwarz Galleries, Philadelphia, 1994; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 2000
Provenance Notes:
[1] In what is said to be a manuscript page of additions to the Peale Museum catalogue in Charles Willson Peale’s hand, the work is titled “231. A loin of Veal” (Historical Catalogue of Paintings in the Philadelphia Museum [1813, with later handwritten additions; Historical Society of Philadelphia]). On March 4, 1817, in an advertisement for the Peale Museum in Philadelphia, Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser announced that “numerous valuable and interesting subjects” had been added to the display, including “A Still Life Piece, representing a fillet of Veal and Vegetables.—Painted by Mr. Raphael Peale.”
[2] The picture apparently stayed with the Peale Museum until the auction sale of the collection in 1854, when it was purchased by Townsend Ward, librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, for $20.00—the highest price given for any of Peale’s still lifes then on offer. In an annotated copy of the 1854 sales catalogue, it is called Loin of Veal (M. Thomas and Sons, Auctioneers, Peale’s Museum Gallery of Oil Paintings, National Portrait and Historical Gallery Illustrative of American History, October 6, 1854, lot 257 [copy in the Historical Society of Philadelphia]).