Distinguished Lecture | “At Kaaterskill Clove: The Artistic and Business Acumen of Harriet Cany Peale" with Nancy Siegel

Join us for a Distinguished Lecture in celebration of the NBMAA's recent landmark acquisition of Harriet Cany Peale’s "Kaaterskill Clove," 1858. Dr. Nancy Siegel, Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Towson University and a specialist on the role of women artists in the sphere of American landscape painting, will give a public lecture titled “At Kaaterskill Clove: The Artistic and Business Acumen of Harriet Cany Peale."

With geographical accuracy and precision, Harriet Cany Peale (1799-1869) captured on canvas the beauty of the American landscape including sites such as Kaaterskill Clove—a well-known destination for travelers, hikers, and tourists by the mid-nineteenth century. The second wife to Rembrandt Peale, Harriet was no mere pupil of her husband, as has previously been asserted. She was a trained artist, exhibiting her work at academies in New York and Philadelphia, while crafting a place for herself within the formidable Peale family of artists. Harriet was also an acute businesswoman who maintained her own financial assets and insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement, one of few legal protections afforded to women, before her marriage. Join us as we celebrate the Museum’s acquisition of a major Hudson River School painting by Harriet Cany Peale, an artist who has been omitted from the art historical canon, until now. Dr. Nancy Siegel’s lecture examines the life and career of this fascinating painter as one of the many women artists of the Hudson River School.

Nancy Siegel is Professor of Art History and Culinary History at Towson University. She specializes in American landscape studies, underrepresented women artists of the 19th century, print culture, and culinary history of the 18th and 19th centuries. Her most recent book, Susie M. Barstow: Redefining the Hudson River School, complemented the touring exhibition she co-curated, Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow & Her Circle/Contemporary Practices, which was on view at the NBMAA in 2024. Dr. Siegel is the author/editor of numerous publications related to nineteenth-century American art and culture and is currently completing the manuscript Political Appetites: Revolution, Taste, and Culinary Activism in the Early American Republic for 2026 and working on an exhibition about the artist Louisa Davis Minot for 2028.