Charles Willson Peale American Revolution What was Peale's role in the American Revolution? He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, What military achievements did he have? he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.
What else did Peale do during this war?
Besides painting portraits of American notables and overseas visitors, what else did Peale do during the War of Independence?
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.  Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.  One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.

Early life 
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.

Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.

Career as a painter 
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.

American Revolution

Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.

Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.

One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Peale Museum 

Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.

The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.

The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.

The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.

The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.

Personal life

In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:

 Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
 Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
 Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
 Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
 Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
 Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.

After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:

 Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
 Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
 Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
 Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.

Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.

Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.

In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.

Expertise 
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.

Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.

Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).

Legacy and honors 

 Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
 The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.

Notable works

See also 
 Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
 George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor

References 

Sources
 Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3

Further reading 
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press

External links 

 Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
 Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
 Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
 Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
 The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
 History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
 Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
 James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress

1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Rubens Peale (May 4, 1784 – July 17, 1865) was an American museum administrator and artist. Born in Philadelphia, he was the son of artist-naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Due to his weak eyesight, he did not practice painting seriously until the last decade of his life, when he painted still life.

Early life and education
He was the fourth son of Charles Willson Peale. Rubens had weak eyes and, unlike most of his siblings, did not set out to be an artist. He traveled with the family in 1802 to the United Kingdom, but was unable to travel on the continent with the resumption of war after the Peace of Amiens.  In 1803 he attended classes at the University of Pennsylvania.
He was director of his father's museum in Philadelphia from 1810 to 1821, and then of the Peale Museum in Baltimore, which he ran with his brother, Rembrandt Peale. To promote the museum, he installed gas lighting illumination in the museum.

Career
Peale opened his own museum in New York on October 26, 1825. The Panic of 1837 sent his museum into debt.  By 1840, Peale changed the name to the New York Museum of Natural History and Science, and competed with the American Museum, of P.T. Barnum. Rubens had to sell his entire collection to Barnum in 1843.  He moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania.  In 1837, he retired to the estate of his father-in-law, George Patterson, near Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, and lived as a country gentleman, at Woodland Farm.  He experimented with mesmerism, and wrote to his brother Rembrandt about it.

In October 1855, he began keeping a journal, and he turned to still life painting, as an extension of his interest in natural history.  In 1864, he returned to Philadelphia, and studied landscape painting with Edward Moran.  In the last ten years of his life, he produced 130 paintings.

Diary entries on the death of Abraham Lincoln

April 15, 1865:
sad news of the murder of President Lincon , he was shot while attending a performance at Fords' Theater last night in Washington. The assassin entered his private box and shot him in back of his head and then escaped, the assassin's name is __,

April the 22nd:
The corpse arrived this afternoon from Harrisburg and it was dark, and although the square was brilliantly illuminated with greek lights each side of the great walk Red, Blue & White, which made a most brilliant appearance and lighted up the wholes square & streets yet much of the procession near lost to us. The crowd was so dense in Walnut Street that police could scarcely keep the crowd back.

April the 23rd:
a fine opportunity of viewing the corpse and decorations of the hall, which was totally covered with black cloth except for the statue & portraits of General Washington & wife. I staid  one hour and left Mary gazing on the corpse, she intending to paint a portrait of him ...

Personal life
On March 6, 1820, he married Eliza Burd Patterson (December 6, 1795 – 1864) and they had children Charles Willson, George Patterson, William, Mary Jane (1826–1902) (who also was a painter), James Burd, and Edward Burd.  Charles Willson Peale (Feb 15, 1821 – Sept 30, 1871) married Harriet Friel (b. Aug 11, 1830); their son Albert Charles Peale (1849-1914) became a geologist with the US Geological Survey.

Legacy

In 1985, the National Gallery of Art paid $4.07 million for Rubens Peale with a Geranium, an 1801 portrait by his brother Rembrandt Peale. This set a record for an American work of art sold at auction.

In 2007, Princeton University Art Museum bought Rubens Peale's Still Life With Watermelon, in honor of John Wilmerding.

References

External links

Peale, Rubens, Papers. 1802-03., Originals and microfiche in The Collected Letters of Charles Willson Peale and His Family. Lillian B. Miller, ed. Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Microform, 1980. England.
PEALE COLLECTION, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Mary Jane Peale and Peale family selected papers, (ca. 1815)-1897, Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Art
Rubens Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Rubens Peale, The Athenaeum 
Peale Family Collection, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, The Winterthur Library
Rembrandt Peale (artist), 1778-1860, Rubens Peale with a Geranium
Rubens Peale, ca. 1800, Raphaelle Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), Still Life with Watermelon, 1865

1784 births
1865 deaths
19th-century American painters
19th-century male artists
American male painters
Rubens
Sibling artists
University of Pennsylvania alumni
American naturalists
Directors of museums in the United States
American curators
Artists from Philadelphia
American still life painters Rembrandt Peale (February 22, 1778 – October 3, 1860) was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  Peale's style was influenced by French Neoclassicism after a stay in Paris in his early thirties.

Biography

Rembrandt Peale was born the third of six surviving children (11 had died) to his mother, Rachel Brewer, and father, Charles Willson Peale, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1778. The father, Charles, also a notable artist, named him after the noted 17th-century Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. His father also taught all of his children, including Raphaelle Peale, Rubens Peale and Titian Peale, to paint scenery and portraiture, and tutored Rembrandt in the arts and sciences.  Rembrandt began drawing at the age of eight. A year after his mother's death and the remarriage of his father, Peale left the school of the arts, and completed his first self-portrait at the age of 13. The canvas displays the young artist's early mastery. The clothes, however, give the notion that Peale exaggerated what a 13-year-old would look like, and Peale's hair curls like the hair of a Renaissance angel. Later in his life, Peale "often showed this painting to young beginners, to encourage them to go from 'bad' to better..."

In July 1787, Charles Willson Peale introduced his son Rembrandt to George Washington, and the young aspirant artist watched his father paint the future president. In 1795, at the age of 17, Rembrandt painted an aging Washington, making him appear far more aged than in reality. The portrait was well received, and Rembrandt had made his debut.

At the age of 20, Peale married 22-year-old Eleanor May Short (1776–1836) at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Philadelphia. During their marriage, Peale and Short had nine children: Rosalba, Eleanor, Michael Angelo, Angelica, and Emma Clara among them. In 1840, he married Harriet Cany (1799–1869), one of his pupils and an artist in her own right.

In 1822, Peale moved to New York City, where he embarked on an attempt to paint what he hoped would become the "standard likeness" of Washington.  He studied portraits by other artists including John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and his own father, as well as his own 1795 picture which had never truly satisfied him. His resulting work Patriae Pater, completed in 1824, depicts Washington through an oval window, and is considered by many to be second only to Gilbert Stuart's iconic Athenaeum painting of the first president. Peale subsequently attempted to capitalize on the success of what quickly became known as his "Porthole" picture. Patriae Pater (Latin for "Father of Our Country") was purchased by Congress in 1832 for $2,000. It currently hangs in the Old Senate Chamber.

In 1826 he helped found the National Academy of Design in New York City.

Peale went on to create over 70 detailed replicas, including one of Washington in full military uniform that currently hangs in the Oval Office. Peale continued to paint other noted portraits, such as those of the third president Thomas Jefferson while he was in office (1805), and later on a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall.

Travels

Noted for his "itinerant" nature, Peale visited Europe several times to study art (Ward). Throughout his life, Peale traveled across the western hemisphere in search of inspiration and opportunities as an artist. His father helped pay his way to Paris, where he stayed from June to September 1808, and again from October 1809 to November 1810. In Paris, Peale studied the works of Jacques-Louis David, which influenced him to paint in the Neoclassical style. He painted the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt and several other noted patrons such as Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and François André Michaux. After his successes in France, Peale returned to Philadelphia in 1810.

His efforts to establish his knowledge and mastery of art were displayed in his painting The Roman Daughter (1811). The painting depicts a young girl shielding her father, a prisoner in chains, and feeding him from her breast, the emblem of "Roman Charity" reported in the pages of Pliny.  It was deemed too "sensational" by the people of Philadelphia, who were unsympathetic to his endeavors toward "improving the state of fine arts in America" in the 19th century. Amid the economic hardship of the War of 1812, President Jefferson—who promised to buy the 1795 portrait of Washington, but could not keep his promise—instead encouraged Peale to go to Europe, as "we have genius among us but no unemployed wealth to reward it".

Peale's Baltimore Museum

Motivated by his father's establishment of the American Museum of Philadelphia (1786) and having been unsuccessful in Philadelphia, Rembrandt Peale assumed his father's role in another city. On August 15, 1814, Peale launched his first museum as soon as he arrived in the municipality of Baltimore, Maryland on Holliday Street between East Saratoga and Lexington Streets, the first building constructed in America to serve as a museum. It later served as the second Baltimore City Hall, 1830–1875; a "Colored" primary, grammar, and high school, part of Baltimore's segregated public school system, 1878–1889; and was restored in 1931 as the Municipal Museum of the City of Baltimore. Renovated and restored again in 1981, it reopened with a groundbreaking interpretive history exhibition, "Rowhouse: A Baltimore Style of Living." In 1985, the Municipal Museum, which had grown to five sites (Peale Museum, Carroll Mansion, 1840 House, Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology, and H.L. Mencken House) was renamed Baltimore City Life Museums. It closed in 1997, a year after opening a new 30,000sf exhibition center.

The museum was elaborately illuminated by gas light, following the example of his brother Rubens in Philadelphia. This innovation made a great impression. Peale had acquired an important gas lighting patent, and with some associates founded the successful Gas Light Company of Baltimore. Having poor business sense, though, he did little to manage the company and was forced out after a few years due to the War of 1812.

In 1828, an ambitious Peale raised funds and tried earning money for his previous paintings, in order to travel to Rome. He took along his 15-year-old son, Michael Angelo, a determined young artist who copied his father's paintings in admiration. Peale successfully displayed portraits of Horatio Greenough and Washington as Patriæ Pater in the Florentine academy.

Peale died June 12, 1860, in Philadelphia and is buried at Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia.

Works

Exhibited and discussed in "In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778–1860," Washington D.C., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian institution, 1992–93, The portrait of Margaret Irvine Miller exemplifies Peale's ability to convey a story and capture character through taking liberty with the way in which he portrayed his sitters. Mrs. Miller, by birth working-class, later raised her position in Philadelphia society. Though her clothing is aristocratic, Mrs. Miller's pose and gaze are those of a straightforward, working-class woman. The subtle juxtaposition is masterfully captured in the finest of terms.

In 1801, Peale painted a portrait of his brother Rubens, youngest of the six Peale children, who always had an admiration for gardening and tending to natural life. Peale seated his brother next to a geranium. The painting signifies the artist's admiration for a sibling's love of nature, and may have been inspired by the Dutch 17th-century artist, David Teniers the Younger, who had painted a series of oil-on-copper paintings representing the five senses. His painting, Smell is quite similar to Rembrandt Peale's. Rembrandt's piece captures the essence of a young gardener/artist's peace of mind, gracefully looking out, a posture of wonder and calmness.

In 1824, Peale painted the Patriæ Pater, in which a rectangle supporting an oval wreath surrounds the eye-catching image of George Washington. The most successful painting of Peale's 50-year career, it inspired John Marshall to have his portrait done by Peale in the same fashion. The painting was criticized as lacking authenticity, as it was not completed until after Washington's death (1799). Nonetheless, Peale received commendations for his portrait by many noted politicians such as Washington's nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington, who was an associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and Marshall.

Peale's neoclassical painting The Roman Daughter demonstrates compassion and graceful defense; his copy of Correggio's Angel, and his immense allegorical painting, Court of Death (1820), reveal the same artistic style.

Legacy

Rembrandt Peale completed more than 600 paintings. He painted portraits of many notable people, including American presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall, and John C. Calhoun.  His paintings are in many public collections.

Collections

The following is a partial list of collections holding works by Rembrandt Peale:

Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution
Baltimore, Maryland: The Peale Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Historical Society, Walters Art Museum
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Atwater Kent Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Detroit, Michigan: Detroit Institute of Arts
Columbus, Georgia: The Columbus Museum
Birmingham, Alabama: Birmingham Museum of Art
New York: Brooklyn Museum, The Peale Museum of New York
New London, Connecticut: Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Dallas, Texas: The Dallas Museum of Art Modern American Collection
Pittsfield, Massachusetts: Berkshire Museum
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: La Salle University Art Museum
Wilmington, Delaware: Hagley Museum and Library

Other notable paintings
 Charles Willson Peale, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1812
 Washington Before Yorktown, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1824
 John C. Calhoun, Gibbes Museum of Art, 1834
 The Sisters, Eleanor and Rosalba Peale, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Brooklyn Museum, 1826
 General Thomas Sumter, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, 1796
 Mrs. Marbury, Private Collection, 1797
 Sculpture, Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia, c. 1812
 DeWitt Clinton, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1823
 Mary Jane Peale, Elise Peale Patterson de Golpi-Toro, New York, 1835
 Eleanor May Short Peale, Private Collection, 1836
 William Henry Harrison, Grouseland (William Henry Harrison House), Vincennes, IN

A portrait identified
A painting of a comedian who was an acquaintance of the British painter George Clint—an artist whose style resembled Peale's, and who claimed the picture as his own—was examined by the National Portrait Gallery of London in 1914. It was initially confirmed as Clint's artwork. Later, the gallery further examined the history behind the painting: the English comedian, Charles Mathews,  had arrived in New York in 1822, and left shortly after Peale had welcomed him for a portrait painting.

Gallery

Notes

References
Hunter, Jr., Wilbur H. "Peale's Baltimore Museum." College Art Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Autumn, 1952), pp. 31–36
Mahey, John A. "The Studio of Rembrandt Peale." American Art Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2. (Autumn, 1969), pp. 20–40.
Meschutt, David." "Rembrandt Peale's Portrait of Charles Mathews, British Comedian, Identified." American Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3. (1989), pp. 74–79.
Miller, Lillian B. Rembrandt Peale: A Life in the Arts: 1778–1860. The Historical Society of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1985
Soltis, Carol Eaton. "Rembrandt Peale's Rubens Peale with a Geranium: A Possible Source in David Teniers the Younger". American Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1/2. (2002), pp. 4–19
Ward, David C. "Celebration of Self: The Portraiture of Charles Willson Peale and Rembrandt Peale, 1822–27." American Art, Vol. 7, No. 1. (Winter, 1993), pp. 8–27.

External links

The Rembrandt And Harriet Peale Papers, 1824–1932 have been digitized and posted online by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Rembrandt Peale on Artcyclopedia.com

Rembrandt Peale Gallery

1778 births
1860 deaths
18th-century American painters
American male painters
19th-century American painters
19th-century male artists
American neoclassical painters
American portrait painters
People from Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Rembrandt
Sibling artists
Artists from Philadelphia
American curators
Directors of museums in the United States
Burials at The Woodlands Cemetery