Mumble-the-Peg

Painted four years before Henry Inman's early death at age forty-five, this genre painting depicts "Mumble the Peg," a knife-pitching contest, in which the weakest thrower must use his teeth to 'mumble' or pull out a wooden peg inserted into the earth. In a peaceful, yet prosperous coastal landscape, two boys of different classes enjoy this game of skill. The cast-aside hat and schoolbooks suggest that rank and education do not affect this game. Meanwhile, the union of the players speaks to the possibility of friendship across classes - potentially an important message when the United States was rapidly growing in population and landmass. Certainly the painting enjoyed great popular success. Not only was it engraved for the magazine "The Gift" in 1844, but it also became the basis for "The Story of Nick Ten Vlyck," a supernatural tale by Charles Fenno Hoffman. Trained by the eccentric New York portraitist, John Wesley Jarvis, Inman helped found the National Academy of Design. Like his Philadelphia contemporary Thomas Sully, Inman was often favorably compared to Sir Thomas Lawrence, the third president of the Royal Academy and the greatest English portraitist of the early nineteenth century, Inman lived in Philadelphia between 1832 and 1835, where he worked as an engraver and served on the board of the Academy.