American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Collection of Charles and Virginia Bowden

Note

This rich and well-balanced still-life that Eliza Bisbee Duffey painted and likely exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts fits within the long-established tradition of still life-painting in Philadelphia. Following the footsteps of elders such as Raphaelle Peale or John F. Francis, Duffey presents a tabletop still-life filled with a large array of fruit and vegetables. Judging from their variety and unusual pairing (raspberries and pears don't grow at the same time), paired with the exotic presence of a pineapple in the background, the work aims at celebrating nature's bounty, and the healthy American soil, a popular theme at the time.

When she was not painting, Duffey was a gifted essayist, and is credited for being amongst the first feminists that America counted. A strong advocate for equality between men and women specifically, she published several books about women's education, sexual health, and called for a new repartition of gender roles. The present work will be accompanied by a first edition copy of Relations of the Sexes, an essay Duffey published in 1876, and in which she tackled the biological history of the female sex. In this strong-worded manual, Duffey also famously raised the now contemporary issue of female consent, and made waves by considering a forced marital sexual the equivalent of a rape.