Charles Willson Peale

American painter and arts patron

• Born: April 15, 1741
• Birthplace: Queen Anne's County, Maryland
• Died: February 22, 1827
• Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Peale combined a sense of patriotism in his portraits of revolutionary and early national leaders such as George Washington with a faith in democracy by establishing the Philadelphia Museum, the first public museum of art and science in America. He also helped found the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Early Life

Charles Willson Peale’s mother was Margaret Triggs of Annapolis, Maryland; his father, Charles Peale, Jr., a convicted forger, had been banished to the colonies in 1735. Peale had five children, of which Charles Willson was the eldest. In 1750, when Charles was only nine years old, his father died, leaving Margaret with five small children. Margaret took the family back to Annapolis and worked as a seamstress there.

Young Charles received whatever education was available, and in 1754, when he was thirteen, his mother apprenticed him to a saddle maker. During the next seven years he learned that craft. At age twenty, the young man completed his apprenticeship and borrowed the money he needed to begin his own business. In February, 1762, he married Rachel Brewer, the first of his three wives. Although successful as a saddle maker, Peale gradually diversified, adding clock making, watch repair, harness making, carriage repair, and sign painting to his skills.

By age twenty-one, Peale, slender and light-complexioned with brown hair and eyes, seemed well started on a career. Yet he longed for something more: He wanted to become a painter. Soon he began painting, using himself, his wife, and friends as subjects. When a neighbor offered him a fee of œ10 to paint his and his wife’s portraits, Charles decided that he needed instruction. He traveled to Philadelphia, bought an art book and what supplies he could afford, and returned home. In 1763, he visited the painter John Hesselius, who lived at a nearby plantation. Peale offered Hesselius an expensive saddle in return for some instruction and for a chance to watch him paint.

The next year his carriage-making partner absconded with most of the funds from their business. Deeply in debt, Peale sold most of his leather goods and supplies but failed to pay all of his bills. Then he joined the country party in a hotly contested election. His group won, but his creditors belonged to the losing side and they sued for the repayment of his debts. With the sheriff bearing warrants searching for him, Peale sailed to New England, beyond the reach of his creditors. He later recalled this incident as the turning point in his life: Having lost his business, he turned his attention to art as a full-time occupation. Peale returned to Maryland in 1766 after friends arranged a settlement of his affairs that would keep him out of debtors’ prison. Shortly after his return, Peale’s association with the local merchants and planters led them to gather funds to send him to England for formal training as a painter.

Life’s Work

With his neighbors paying his way, Charles Willson Peale sailed for England in December, 1766. In London, early the next year, he began working in the studio of Benjamin West. While there, Peale tried many types of artistic endeavors, including oil portraits, miniatures, busts in plaster of Paris, and mezzotints. While in London he showed a painting and several miniatures at the exhibit of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. In early 1769, he became homesick for Maryland and his wife and child, so he returned home.

Back in the colonies, Peale turned his energies to painting full-length portraits of the Maryland gentry. In 1772, he visited Mount Vernon, where he did a portrait of George Washington in his Virginia militia uniform, the only painting of Washington done before the American Revolution. Despite Peale’s success at doing portraits for the scattered planters, he hoped to move to Philadelphia so that the family could live together. Before that happened, however, the strain between England and the colonies broke into open revolt.

In 1776, the Peales moved to Philadelphia because Charles thought that an urban center offered more opportunity. A man of strong patriotic feelings, he enlisted in the city militia and was soon elected a first lieutenant. Peale’s unit participated in the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, and, by June, 1777, he received an appointment as a captain of infantry. Early the next year, the British occupied Philadelphia and Peale was out of the army, serving instead on several civil and military committees as well as being elected as a representative to the Pennsylvania legislature. In late 1780, his bid for reelection to the legislature failed, and he retired from local politics.

Throughout the disruptions caused by the war and his political activities, Peale continued to paint. In fact, the executive council of Pennsylvania commissioned him to do a portrait of Washington in the middle of the war. He bought a home in Philadelphia during 1780 and during the next several years added a studio and an exhibition room. He continued to paint portraits and miniatures of leading military and political figures throughout the revolutionary era. At the same time, Peale strove to gain some economic security for his family. He opened a portrait gallery to show his work in 1782 and several years later offered the public an exhibition of “moving pictures.”

In 1786, Peale opened the Philadelphia Museum. At the time, there were no museums in America, and the few museums that existed in Europe were open only for the privileged classes. Peale saw his museum as a logical part of the American Revolution. In addition to making the government open to the citizens, he would make art and science available too. Also, by charging a modest fee he hoped for a satisfactory family income. His museum was the first such venture in the United States, and it put Peale at the head of a group of American scientists, artists, and intellectuals then living in or around Philadelphia.

In 1790, Rachel Brewer Peale, Peale’s first wife, died, and a year later he married Elizabeth DePeyster. As the museum collections grew, Peale moved his operations twice. In 1802, the Pennsylvania government allowed him to relocate in the vacant state house (Independence Hall). Between moves, Peale found time to buy some mastodon bones, and in 1801 he organized an expedition to Newburgh, New York, to excavate the rest of the animal’s remains. While digging, the searchers unearthed a second mastodon, and from these bones Peale and his associates assembled one complete skeleton for display. By this time the museum contained hundreds of birds, mammals, and insects, in addition to Peale’s paintings. To display them he introduced the practice of using their natural habitat as background, a distinct change from the then-current practice of using single-color or neutral backgrounds.

Peale retained his broad range of interests throughout his adult life. He developed a type of fireplace, experimented with plows and types of seeds, and introduced the physiognotrace for making profiles, then so popular. Continuing to paint, he also met or corresponded with the most prominent artists, scientists, and intellectuals of the day. In 1804, his wife Elizabeth died, and the next year he married Hannah More (not the British writer). He remained active in artistic and scientific activities in Philadelphia, helping to found the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts that same year. In 1810, he retired, deeding the museum to his son, Rubens Peale.

Although he claimed to be retired, Peale’s curiosity and drive continued. He corresponded frequently with Thomas Jefferson, wrote essays, gave public addresses, and continued his active interest in American scientific and artistic activities, painting portraits of President James Monroe and also of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. He also did portraits of the officers and scientists of Stephen H. Long’s 1819 Scientific Expedition being sent west to explore the Missouri Valley. In 1822, Peale reassumed management of the museum and remained active in Philadelphia until his death in 1827.

Significance

Charles Willson Peale’s paintings provide an unmatched view of late colonial American society. By no means a brilliant artist, he was nevertheless a keen observer and a highly competent craftsman. His early portraits show the elegance of plantation society along the Chesapeake Bay. He participated in both military and political aspects of the American Revolution, and through long acquaintance with many leading figures in early American history he had repeated chances to depict them. For example, Peale painted many portraits of George Washington, who is known to have sat for him at least seven different times. Local and regional leaders, too, sat for his work as he painted individuals from presidents and statesmen to his neighbors and family during the first half century of national independence.

Peale was also an inventor, natural scientist, and museum curator. His Philadelphia Museum began as a sort of hall of fame for early national heroes but soon evolved into the nation’s first repository for scientific and natural specimens. Here Peale’s contributions were varied. Offering such displays to the public was new and daring. Yet his skills in preserving and displaying specimens were impressive, too. He used habitat settings for the displays, varied the museum holdings, and used the lighting and surroundings to depict his material in a natural manner. Peale depicted his own view of his contributions to American society in a self-portrait painted when he was eighty-one years old. There he appears smiling and urging the public to enter while he lifts a curtain showing the museum display room. To him, American democracy was not simply about making politics available to the citizenry; it also was about making art, science, and knowledge available to all.

Bibliography

Briggs, Berta N. Charles Willson Peale, Artist and Patriot. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952. A popular account of Peale’s life. Although the author included no sources, the work is based on solid scholarship.

Brigham, David R. Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and Its Audience. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. A history of Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, outlining its development as an educational resource, a business, and even a form of entertainment. Brigham describes how the museum helped define the terms of public participation in early American cultural institutions.

Miller, Lillian B., ed. Charles Willson Peale: Artist in Revolutionary America, 1735-1791. Vol. 1 in The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983. A detailed, scholarly collection of Peale family papers, including letters, diaries, and legal notices. Likely of more interest to scholars than to the general reader, it offers an intimate glance into life in colonial America.

Richardson, Edgar P., Brooke Hindle, and Lillian B. Miller. Charles Willson Peale and His World. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982. This book grew out of an exhibition of Peale’s art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Each contributor provides a thoughtful essay focusing on a particular aspect of Peale’s career or character.

Sellers, Charles Coleman. Charles Willson Peale. 2 vols. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1947. A biography that includes generous excerpts from Peale’s diary, letters, and autobiography. This is the first of Sellers’s several books on Peale.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Charles Willson Peale. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969. This lavishly illustrated full-length biography is based on Sellers’s 1947 two-volume study but includes new material and corrections of minor errors in the earlier version. The narrative is clear and interesting, and the conclusions are well presented.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. Sellers focuses on Peale and his family to discuss their role in early museum operations and the growth of American art and natural science. Places Peale within the broad context of American intellectual and artistic development during the first half century of independence.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Portraits and Miniatures of Charles Willson Peale. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1952. Meant for the serious student of early American portrait art, this volume includes an assessment of Peale’s skills and techniques. It provides an alphabetical listing and discussion of 1,046 of his works and reproductions of 471 of his paintings.

Ward, David C. Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. A comprehensive, insightful biography. Ward portrays Peale as a self-made polymath, who carefully created and controlled his image through his autobiography, self-portraits, and other means.