Niagara Falls from the Canadian Side, Table Rock

Public Domain

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Artist Rembrandt Peale(American, 1778–1860)American, 1778–1860

CultureAmerican

Titles

Niagara Falls from the Canadian Side, Table Rock

Date1831

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsCanvas: 18 1/16 × 24 3/16 in. (45.9 × 61.4 cm)
Frame: 27 5/8 × 33 9/16 × 4 1/16 in. (70.2 × 85.2 × 10.3 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Lora Jean Kilroy Endowment for American Art, the Ann G. Trammell Endowment for American Art, and the Friends of American Art Fund

Object number2025.233

Not on view

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Department

American Art

Object Type

PAINTING

ProvenancePossibly the artist; Possibly the artist’s estate; Possibly [Sale: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 18, 1862, no. 51]; Private collection, Connecticut; Private collection, by descent; [Surovek Gallery, Palm Beach, c. 1981]; Neal Andrews, Birmingham, Alabama; [Surovek Gallery, Palm Beach, 2006]; Private collection; [Godel & Co. New York]; Private collection, Florida, acquired directly from the above, until 2024; [Debra Force Fine Art, Inc., New York]; Purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2025.

Though Debra Force included in her original fact sheet that the work was sold at Peale’s 1862 estate auction, the catalogue for that sale lists no. 51 (“Falls of Niagara, Canada Side, 1832”) under ‘Drawings and Paintings,’ along with lot no. 50, “Falls of Niagara from Goat Island, 1832." The other lots in this section are variously described as ‘small original sketch,’ ‘tracing,’ ‘crayon drawing,’ and ‘original study.’

Immediately following these lots begins a section of lots titled ‘Oil Paintings.’ If the “Falls of Niagara, Canada Side” in the 1862 sale is indeed an oil painting, one wonders why it was grouped with crayon sketches and not the other works explicitly labeled as oil paintings. However, only a page after the ‘Oil Paintings’ section begins, lots described as ‘autograph book’ and ‘line engraving’ appear. This inconsistent labeling makes it difficult to determine the exact medium of the Niagara works featured in the 1862 sale. In “The Studio of Rembrandt Peale,” The American Art Journal vol. 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1969), p. 30, John A. Mahey explicitly identifies lots 50 and 51 in the 1862 sale as unlocated watercolor sketches on which Peale’s oil views of Niagara were based. A Peale watercolor sketch of Harper’s Ferry survives in the collection of the Baltimore City Life Museum (Fig. 10). What seems to be the finished oil after this study came to auction at Sotheby’s in 1989 (Fig. 11).

After consulting on this matter with Carol Eaton Soltis, curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a leading scholar on the Peale family, Debra Force Fine Art has informed the Museum that it is possible but not certain that "Niagara Falls from the Canadian Side, Table Rock" came from Peale’s 1862 estate sale. Soltis remarked that the catalogue in question can be unreliable, and thus calls subsequent scholarship based on it into question as well. She asserts that nos. 50 and 51 were not watercolors and that it is unlikely Mahey saw them in person. Rather, his assessment is due to their positioning within the catalogue, which, as previously noted, is an unreliable source. Soltis has likewise never seen any watercolors by Peale that fit the description of nos. 50 and 51.
Exhibition HistoryNational Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., "In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778-1860" (November 6, 1992 – February 15, 1993).

Philadelphia Museum of Art, "The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy 1770-1870" (November 3, 1996 - January 7, 1997). Traveled to Fine Arts Museums of San Fransico, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum (January 25 – April 6, 1997), Corcoran Gallery of Art (April 26 – July 6, 1997).

Published References John A. Mahey, “The Studio of Rembrandt Peale,” The American Art Journal vol. 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1969), p. 30. Jeremy Elwell Adamson, “Frederic Edwin Church’s ‘Niagara’: The Sublime as Transcendence” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1981), pp. 151-52. Carol Eaton Hevner, "Rembrandt Peale 1778-1860: A Life in the Arts" (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 92, 105. Jeremy Elwell Adamson, "Niagara: Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes 1697-1901" (Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1985), pp. 46, 78. Carrie H. Scheflow, “Rembrandt Peale: A Chronology,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 110, no. 1 (January 1986), p. 162. Lillian B. Miller, "In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860" (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in association with the University of Washington Press, 1992), pp. 211-214, 302 pl. 27, fig. 95, illus. Lillian B. Miller, ed., "The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy 1770-1870" (New York and Washington, D.C.: Abbeville Press, The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1996), no. 108, pp. 83-86; 307, pl. 51, illus. Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Verso: Inscribed in ink, top right corner: Niagara Falls / from the Canada side / showing the Platfrom called Table Rock. / by Rembrandt Peale. [cursive]

N/A

Catalogue raisonnéN/A

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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