Peirce was both a prominent painter and a well-known colorful figure in the world of the arts. In a modern account, he was described as Rabelaisian, bawdy, witty, robust, wild, lusty, protean, lecherous, and luscious. He was sometimes called "the American Renoir." Peirce once said he never worked a day in his life. He did, however, spend many hours every day for 50 years of his life painting still lifes, figures, and landscapes as well as hundreds of pictures of his beloved families (he was married four times and had numerous children). With a mustache and full beard and a large cigar jammed perpetually into his mouth he looked every inch of a cartoonist's notion of an artist. Peirce himself was adamant about one thing: "I'm a painter," he insisted, "not an artist."