The Monkey Picture

Henry Church, Jr. (American, 1836-1908) The Monkey Picture, about 1888 Oil on paper mounted on cloth The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Virginia

Church poked fun at the conventions of still-life painting by unleashing two banana-pursuing monkeys upon this arrangement. Both the urban cop in pursuit and the cage to which he seeks to return the monkeys had topical significance when the artist (a lifelong resident of Chagrin Falls) conceived his subject, for Clevelands first zoo was built in the 1880s. In addition to disrupting conventional ideas about how to depict a table laden with fruit, Church's painting purposely violates pictorial conventions. Instead of distinguishing between near and far objects, Church has one monkey's tail encircle the head of the lionskin rug as if the two were next to one another. Rather than using minute scale to make objects seem far away, the glass that has fallen on the rug seems gigantic. Such inventions promoted Church's public image as an outsider to establish ideas about art.