Orlando museum collection overview and analysis

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Art analysis: The Young Artist by Thomas Mickell Burnham

At the Orlando Museum of Art, in the American collection there is oil-on-canvas (25 x 30 in) provocatively entitled the Young Artist by Thomas Mickell Burnham. The title of this work might seem to suggest the painting is of some aspiring, tormented artist, and perhaps a similar work authored in 1840 in Europe might have this image. Instead, the title is deeply ironic. The realistic work depicts a rustic scene, with a young Caucasian boy drawing a picture on a beer barrel while an old woman looks over her small cottage door, several other boys look on, and an African-American child of the same age as the 'artist' also watches. The African-American child wears an oversized coat and a red rag wound on his head and the other boys wear various types of suits and jackets typical of young boys of the period. The friends, like the artist, do not look working-class or upper class.

In terms of dress, the African-American child looks more 'foreign' than the other boys, although he smiles like the other children. The old, grandmother like-figure looks more pensive, but does not stop the 'artist.' The overall atmosphere of the scene is one of a kind of picturesque setting and seems to mock artistic aspirations on a grand scale, instead suggesting a more humble theme. Even graffiti on a beer barrel can be art. There are resonances with Tom Sawyer, in the depiction, although the African-American figure is not 'stereotyped' in his expression like a Southern scene might be, even though the young child is dressed differently.

Burnham was not a Southerner -- rather he was born in Boston. He is called a representative of the early American folk art movement, and is most famous for a painting called the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Viewed in the context of his larger career, the work can be seen as ironic commentary on what constitutes 'great art' -- American great artists are humble in contrast to European artists, and of the people. They do rough art out in the open, but the art they do has value and provides entertainment for the masses. Burnham spent most of his life in the early, expanding West in Detroit, Michigan. He worked as sign painter as well as a popular artist of portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes like the Young Artist. Burnham did the Lewis and Clark Expedition from his imagination, and many of his works are stylized and idealized types of Americana. The charm of the young boy drawing on a beer barrel to delight his friends, an old woman, and an African-American child (perhaps a servant or a slave, it remains slightly unclear) suggests that this is what true American art is -- and should resemble (Thomas Mickell Burnham, 2009, Ask Art). Burnham was also fond of popular seascapes of ships and sailors, evidently culled from his memory growing up in Boston.