Buttermilk Pedlar 1870

Curator: So, let's dive into this gem, "Buttermilk Pedlar," painted around 1870 by William P. Chappel. It's a quaint little scene hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, rendered in watercolor. What jumps out at you? Editor: Immediately, the slightly flattened perspective gives it this whimsical, almost dreamlike quality. It feels very… deliberate. Like a memory unfolding. I'm curious about the buttermilk itself! Curator: Ah, the material reality! Well, Chappel, more broadly, captured everyday life. What you’re seeing is a genre painting: this buttermilk pedlar's route, this social transaction in action. Note the man pulling his cart, likely heavy with canisters or bottles, trailed by a loyal dog. The house in the background… Editor: That grand house dominates everything. Its architecture feels so definitive against the blurred landscape. But look – it IS buttermilk! The whole picture shifts when I think of production: churning, bottling, carting, and selling...it feels quite contemporary. Curator: I love that! Seeing labor inherent to an image— that transforms my impression. Did they hand-bottle buttermilk like we have now, in these kinds of containers that… oh I don’t know— remind me of Victorian chemistry sets or alchemic instruments. Editor: Perhaps. Watercolor too—the thin layers suggest he was making this over and over, or making batches just like the buttermilk, using simple methods. A commercial art practice. Curator: Precisely! Chappel was also an active lithographer; so you see how he could do both. Look at the red house; how it echoes the reds of the peddler’s own garb! Even the dog matches…a perfect salesman. A lovely dog days reverie to a lost New York, now replaced by our chain supermarkets… Editor: So, this humble buttermilk seller represents so much. With a new perspective on materiality, I am left pondering how we value products and makers from this period compared to then and now. Curator: A point! A lovely watercolor snapshot of both a man and a way of life, a vision that makes you realize how we build on all those folks every day now.