Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), Adrian Lamb
after Benjamin West (c.1768).
Maryland Commission on Artistic Property [MSA SC 1545-1032].
Charles Willson Peale, well-known American
portraitist, was born in Queen Anne's County, Maryland in 1741.
He arrived in Annapolis at the age of
nine as an apprentice to a local saddler. As a youth, Peale taught himself
to paint by observing the techniques of
portraitist John Hesselius. He also acquainted himself with the work
of John Singleton Copley on a visit to
Boston, after which Peale won the patronage of the Annapolis gentry.
A number of Peale's Annapolis patrons
financed his 1767 trip to London to study with renowned painter
Benjamin West. While learning from West
in London, Peale completed two full-length portraits of William Pitt,
one of which he presented to the new State
House in Annapolis "as a tribute of Gratitude." Returning to
America in 1769, Peale lived in Annapolis
until 1775, and during those six years, he traveled throughout
the Middle Colonies painting numerous
portraits of colonial leaders.
In 1775, Peale moved to Philadelphia where,
as an enthusiastic patriot, he joined the city militia as a private.
A man "determined to do his utmost in
the common cause of America," Peale to the rank of first lieutenant,
and accompanied his unit to the front
in December of 1776. He crossed the Delaware River from Trenton
into Pennsylvania just as the remnants
of Washington's army arrived on the river bank, and later described
their crossing as "the most hellish scene
I have ever beheld."
Back in Philadelphia, Peale served on a
number of revolutionary committees as well as the
General Assembly of Pennsylvania. In 1802,
he made a deliberate effort to provide a pictorial record
of the Revolution for future generations.
To this end, Peale established a museum at Independence Hall
to display the portraits he had painted
throughout the war.
Although Peale continued to paint, his
later years were dominated by a growing interest in natural history
and science. Ingenious exhibits
of stuffed animals and birds (as well as the reconstructed skeleton of
a
mammouth that Peale himself unearthed)
shared the spaces at Peale's museum with his renderings of
American heroes and other notables.
A true "universal man" who plunged with
equal enthusiasm into taxidermy, "moving pictures,"
making false teeth and designing mechanical
farm equipment, Charles Willson Peale is best
remembered as the "Artist of the American
Revolution." He was the patriarch of what became an
extraordinary family of American painters
which included his children Raphaelle (1774-1825),
Rembrandt (1778-1860), Rubens (1784-1865),
Titian Ramsay (1799-1885), with niece
Sarah Miriam Peale (1800-1885), and nephew
Charles Peale Polk (1767-1866).
The Maryland Commission on Artistic Property
collection of state-owned artwork includes
eleven portraits by Charles Willson Peale.
Among them are
Washington, Lafayette and Tilghman at
Yorktown,
William Pitt,
William Paca
and George Washington.
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