Skip to main contentBiographyCharles Willson Peale (1741–1827) was a figure of enormous influence in colonial and federal America. He was not only a painter of note, but also the founder of a museum, a natural scientist, an inventor, a writer, and the patriarch of an enormous brood of children, many of whom also became artists. He was born in Maryland in 1741. His father, Charles Peale, immigrated to America when financial scandal forced him to flee England. In Maryland, the elder Peale worked as a schoolteacher until his death in 1750. After his father’s death, Charles Willson apprenticed with a saddle-maker in order to relieve the financial burden on his family; after his apprenticeship, he established his own sadlery. In the beginning, he painted simply to supplement his income as a sadler, but he soon began accepting commissions for portraits. Although he did seek training from colonial painters such as John Hesselius, Peale was initially largely self-taught. [1]
Peale’s work as a portraitist soon brought him to the attention of prominent men in Annapolis who decided to collect funds to send the young artist to England for formal instruction. He arrived in London in February 1767 and spent two years studying with the expatriate American painter Benjamin West. [2] He returned to Annapolis as a well-trained painter confident in his abilities and ready to take on new commissions from affluent clients. He painted the well-known Peale Family Group, 1771–1773, and 1809, as a kind of advertisement for his abilities—the painting references different genres of art, including individual portraits of his wife, mother, brothers, and others, as well as busts that demonstrated his familiarity with classical mythology, small still-life arrangements, and animals.
In 1775, Peale moved his young family to Philadelphia, a hotbed of growing revolutionary fervor. Peale himself was a political firebrand, sympathetic to the cause of revolution, and he soon joined the Philadelphia militia, later fighting with George Washington in key battles at Princeton and Trenton. [3] In 1779, he memorialized this experience by painting George Washington at Princeton, in which the general is shown with the standards of the vanquished Hessian troops at his feet.
After the war, commissions for portraits flowed in steadily. In 1791, Peale embarked on his most ambitious project: the establishment of a museum. Peale’s museum, in Philadelphia, was one of the first of its kind in this country and extraordinarily modern for its time. In addition to portraits of celebrated men, the museum held taxidermic animals, displayed in hand-painted dioramas, Native American artifacts, exotic plants, rare minerals, and, perhaps most thrilling of all, the skeleton of a mastodon. Peale had exhumed the mastodon bones after their discovery on a farm in upstate New York; he himself designed a device to pump water out of the dig site. He later captured the scene in the painting The Exhumation of the Mastodon, 1805–1808. Peale painted the museum itself in The Artist in his Museum, commissioned by the museum trustees to honor the museum’s founding. In it, Peale, surrounded by the implements of his wide-ranging talents, such as taxidermy tools and paintbrushes, raises a velvet curtain to reveal the museum’s dramatic collection and invites the viewer to enter.
Peale was also involved in the formation of an arts academy, the first of its kind in the country. Known as the Columbianum, or the American Academy, the institute was intended to provide formal instruction for art students and the opportunity for exhibition. Although the venture was short-lived, it did inspire one notable painting by Peale. [4] Called The Staircase Group, 1795, the painting shows Peale’s sons Raphaelle and Titian Ramsay pausing to look back at the viewer as they mount a winding staircase. Peale created the highly illusionistic painting as a visual trick, even adding a real staircase to the bottom of the frame. The lore surrounding the painting includes a story involving George Washington, who was reportedly so convinced by the illusion that he nodded to the “boys” as he passed the painting.
Peale spent his later years deeply involved in his museum and in the lives of the members of his large family. He married three times; with his first two wives, he had seventeen children, eleven of whom lived to adulthood. [5] He named many of his children after artists and scientists, including Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Charles Linnaeus, and Angelica Kauffman. His daughter Angelica was the only child named for an artist Peale knew personally; as a young man, he had met Angelica Kauffman in London, and admired her greatly. [6] While his daughter Angelica reportedly drew with skill, she remained an amateur artist, devoting her life instead to being a wife and mother. Peale’s sons Raphaelle and Rembrandt, in contrast, became professional artists in their own right, while Rubens and Titian Ramsay II (the second of Peale’s sons to bear that name, the first having died at age eighteen), devoted their careers to their father’s museum ventures. [7]
In 1810, Peale retired at the age of sixty-nine with his third wife to a farm outside Philadelphia, where he occupied himself with gardening and painting. With his wife’s death, however, Peale found farm life too isolated. He returned to Philadelphia, again took up the direction of the museum, and continued painting; The Artist in his Museum was painted during this period. [8] He died in Philadelphia in 1827. Through his museum, his paintings, and his descendants, Peale’s larger-than-life presence continued to be felt long into the next century.
Notes:
[1] Lillian B. Miller, ed., The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770–1870 Exhibition catalogue. (New York: Abbeville Press in association with the Trust for Museum Exhibitions and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1996), 18, and David C. Ward, Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 16.
[2] Ward, Charles Willson Peale, 32.
[3] Miller, The Peale Family, 21.
[4] Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 272.
[5] Miller, The Peale Family, 27.
[6] Sellers, Charles Willson Peale, 64.
[7] Miller, The Peale Family, 36.
[8] Miller, The Peale Family, 27.
Charles Willson Peale
1741 - 1827
Peale’s work as a portraitist soon brought him to the attention of prominent men in Annapolis who decided to collect funds to send the young artist to England for formal instruction. He arrived in London in February 1767 and spent two years studying with the expatriate American painter Benjamin West. [2] He returned to Annapolis as a well-trained painter confident in his abilities and ready to take on new commissions from affluent clients. He painted the well-known Peale Family Group, 1771–1773, and 1809, as a kind of advertisement for his abilities—the painting references different genres of art, including individual portraits of his wife, mother, brothers, and others, as well as busts that demonstrated his familiarity with classical mythology, small still-life arrangements, and animals.
In 1775, Peale moved his young family to Philadelphia, a hotbed of growing revolutionary fervor. Peale himself was a political firebrand, sympathetic to the cause of revolution, and he soon joined the Philadelphia militia, later fighting with George Washington in key battles at Princeton and Trenton. [3] In 1779, he memorialized this experience by painting George Washington at Princeton, in which the general is shown with the standards of the vanquished Hessian troops at his feet.
After the war, commissions for portraits flowed in steadily. In 1791, Peale embarked on his most ambitious project: the establishment of a museum. Peale’s museum, in Philadelphia, was one of the first of its kind in this country and extraordinarily modern for its time. In addition to portraits of celebrated men, the museum held taxidermic animals, displayed in hand-painted dioramas, Native American artifacts, exotic plants, rare minerals, and, perhaps most thrilling of all, the skeleton of a mastodon. Peale had exhumed the mastodon bones after their discovery on a farm in upstate New York; he himself designed a device to pump water out of the dig site. He later captured the scene in the painting The Exhumation of the Mastodon, 1805–1808. Peale painted the museum itself in The Artist in his Museum, commissioned by the museum trustees to honor the museum’s founding. In it, Peale, surrounded by the implements of his wide-ranging talents, such as taxidermy tools and paintbrushes, raises a velvet curtain to reveal the museum’s dramatic collection and invites the viewer to enter.
Peale was also involved in the formation of an arts academy, the first of its kind in the country. Known as the Columbianum, or the American Academy, the institute was intended to provide formal instruction for art students and the opportunity for exhibition. Although the venture was short-lived, it did inspire one notable painting by Peale. [4] Called The Staircase Group, 1795, the painting shows Peale’s sons Raphaelle and Titian Ramsay pausing to look back at the viewer as they mount a winding staircase. Peale created the highly illusionistic painting as a visual trick, even adding a real staircase to the bottom of the frame. The lore surrounding the painting includes a story involving George Washington, who was reportedly so convinced by the illusion that he nodded to the “boys” as he passed the painting.
Peale spent his later years deeply involved in his museum and in the lives of the members of his large family. He married three times; with his first two wives, he had seventeen children, eleven of whom lived to adulthood. [5] He named many of his children after artists and scientists, including Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Charles Linnaeus, and Angelica Kauffman. His daughter Angelica was the only child named for an artist Peale knew personally; as a young man, he had met Angelica Kauffman in London, and admired her greatly. [6] While his daughter Angelica reportedly drew with skill, she remained an amateur artist, devoting her life instead to being a wife and mother. Peale’s sons Raphaelle and Rembrandt, in contrast, became professional artists in their own right, while Rubens and Titian Ramsay II (the second of Peale’s sons to bear that name, the first having died at age eighteen), devoted their careers to their father’s museum ventures. [7]
In 1810, Peale retired at the age of sixty-nine with his third wife to a farm outside Philadelphia, where he occupied himself with gardening and painting. With his wife’s death, however, Peale found farm life too isolated. He returned to Philadelphia, again took up the direction of the museum, and continued painting; The Artist in his Museum was painted during this period. [8] He died in Philadelphia in 1827. Through his museum, his paintings, and his descendants, Peale’s larger-than-life presence continued to be felt long into the next century.
Notes:
[1] Lillian B. Miller, ed., The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1770–1870 Exhibition catalogue. (New York: Abbeville Press in association with the Trust for Museum Exhibitions and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1996), 18, and David C. Ward, Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 16.
[2] Ward, Charles Willson Peale, 32.
[3] Miller, The Peale Family, 21.
[4] Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 272.
[5] Miller, The Peale Family, 27.
[6] Sellers, Charles Willson Peale, 64.
[7] Miller, The Peale Family, 36.
[8] Miller, The Peale Family, 27.
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