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Krimmel was familiar with the British or European tradition for market subjects through the annual exhibitions at the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in which he, too, had entered pictures. 15 One example he would have seen in 1811
was A Countryman Returning from Market, with Fowl and Basket of Eggs (no. 217) by the Dutch artist Aelbert Cuyp
(1620–1691); another, in 1813, was Going to Market (no. 64) by an artist identified only as “Brewdet.” Thomas
Gainsborough (1727–1788) had popularized market subjects among British artists and their public by introducing rustic
men, women, and children, who were going to market or returning, as elements in forest scenes as early as the 1760s. 16 The
slight suggestion of narrative in these pictures is well represented in Gainsborough’s Road from Market of 1767–68 (Toledo
Museum of Art). As market themes gained prominence, another Englishman, Francis Wheatley (1747–1801), became
known for adopting the subjects and emphasizing their anecdotal content. 17 Prints from his pictures and those of other
artists could have inspired Krimmel in Philadelphia, or he could have recalled pictures he had seen abroad.
Market subjects found a place in American painting in the years following Krimmel’s efforts. Typical examples are Market Day
(Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond) of 1842 by George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879) 18 and Going to Market (private
collection) of 1887 by Edward Lamson Henry (1841–1919). 19 These pictures reveal that representations of going to or returning
from market are among the weddings, elections, and Fourth-of-July celebrations that Krimmel introduced to American art.
Krimmel’s direct inspiration from specific British or European pictures and prints of market subjects has not been
established. Their existence is unlikely, because none of Krimmel’s other subjects can be traced to an exact source.
Krimmel did travel often from Philadelphia into the countryside to observe subjects for pictures. One of his few surviving letters
urges his friend Thomas Birch (1779–1851) to join him in the summer of 1812 or 1813 in an unspecified place for painting
“beautiful scenery.” 20 Krimmel’s sketchbooks document other excursions in both casual and detailed watercolors and drawings.
Among them, studies of a turkey could be the direct source for the one at the lower right of Going to Market—The Disaster. 21
Accuracy in painting the turkey and other details was essential for Krimmel’s contemporary acceptance. This feature of his
picture is useful today for documenting a vanished world. The usual portrait of the time records clothing among people
who—if not wealthy—were prosperous and occasionally preserved the costly attire in which they posed. Krimmel’s pictures
are unusual for recording dress among laborers and farmers without funds for portraits. They wore out clothing and repaired
garments with remnants until they discarded them. Going to Market—The Disaster records other transitory objects, from
buckets to wagons, that often lack documentation.
Many Americans in the second decade of the nineteenth century considered such records of daily life a lesser form of artistic
expression than the history painting endorsed in lectures to the Royal Academicians in London by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792). His published annual Discourses were well known to Americans and reveal the gradual changes in the
principles since the Renaissance. Reynolds considered historical or literary subjects that offered moral instruction to be the
most important in a hierarchy of subjects. Portraits were at the bottom of the scale and slightly less important than genre
subjects. 22 The challenge to this standard and the new interest in subjects from daily life during Krimmel’s period are well
represented by James Robinson’s endorsement of them in Zachariah Poulson’s newspaper in 1820, cited above, and by the
North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal of Boston in 1816. 23
Genre subjects were gaining acceptance among progressive Americans, partly through the growing popularity of a
contemporary British artist, Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841), with whom Krimmel had declared an alliance. In 1813
Krimmel exhibited a copy (Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago) of an engraving by John Burnet (1784–1868) after
Wilkie’s cottage scene of 1806, The Blind Fiddler (Tate Gallery, London), in the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania
Academy; beside it he placed his American rural counterpart, Quilting Frolic (Winterthur Museum). 24 Wilkie shrewdly had
combined the waning humanist tradition with the rising genre movement by composing his scene from contemporary daily
life according to the rules for pictures illustrating moral lessons. Instances of Krimmel’s adoption of these rules in Going to