Eliza B. Duffey (American, 1838–1898) Still Life with Books, Peach and Butterfly

Signed and dated 'Mrs. EB Duffey/1865' bottom right, oil on canvas
12 x 14 in. (30.5 x 35.6cm)

Provenance

Private Collection, California.

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 several fruit, dispersed books and a large flower bouquet, which a graceful monarch butterfly forages. Such an exotic presence aimed at showing America's varied fauna and flora, and attract the eye of potential collectors.

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.