William Sidney Mount (A Long Island Artist): His Life and His Work

William Sidney Mount was a genre painter labeled by his critics “absolutely American”. Mount grounded his work on subtle variations of countryfolk, rural activities, social arrangements and the body politic of the 19th century. He created paintings of the Yankee Yeoman, the African American Citizen, the Rural Farmboy and the Gambling Sovereigns.  

William Sidney Mount was the only artist of the 1830’s to take issue with the discrepancies in the democracy – he put politics into the public arena with deceptively innocent pictorial language.

Mount could “stir people up” with his revealing visual criticism.

This slideshow/lecture will spotlight the blithness of Mount’s treatment of powder keg political issues of the 19th century – genre paintings with visual puns fundamental to the economic, political and social realms of the time.

Enter the world of William Sidney Mount and view the paintings that delight, amaze and seduce the viewer with explicit commentary that will clarify the complex, riddling content of his genre paintings.