In his essay, Canaday compares the portraits of two families: the Belleli family, and the Peale family. In his analysis of the Peal family, he mentions the placements of the subjects. He criticizes how the people, because they were all painted separately at different days over the period of many years, did not look as if they harmonically sat together. The composition of their positioning was awkward, and thus did not emit much emotion. He also takes note into the detail of the proportion sizes. He notes how the arm of the grandmother is abnormally large. He notes how Peale also awkwardly places the man in the composition over the sister in the far left. He sought meaning in the piece by noting how it was more of a “family” because in the composition the man was sketching the grandmother, thus tying in the two divided groups of the painting into a whole. He decides that the Peale family is not a terribly awful piece, though it does have its flaws with a bit of “dryness” to it. The Bellelli family, however, was looked at in a better light. He analyzed the relationship between the people in the painting—how the father was removed in the family just as he probably was in real life. The positioning of the subjects was critically looked at as well. For example, the little girl in the centre of the composition was “conflicted” according to Canaday, for her body stayed close to her mother, though it “longingly” looked towards her father. I agree with Canaday to say that the Bellelli Family by Degas was a better portrait overall. It showed the relationship—the attachment as well as the tension living amongst the members. The Peale Family portrait was not bad, though I was not struck with the same feeling of a real sense of “family” in it.