The most successful portraitist working in Philadelphia during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, Charles Willson Peale depicted the leading lights of his day, including heroes of the American Revolution and members of the colonial aristocracy. Known for his egalitarian outlook, Peale also painted likenesses of his friends and neighbors, portraying his subjects, whatever their position in society, in a candid realist style. An energetic man with a strong work ethic and a visionary desire to contribute to the cultural and intellectual fabric of the nation, he also established the country’s first public art gallery and its first museum of natural history. Peale’s unique role in the annals of American art also stems from the fact that he founded a dynasty of talented painters––portrait, figure, and still-life specialists––who carried on his aesthetic principles and his values.
Born on Kent Island, in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, Peale was a son of Charles Peale, a Cambridge-educated schoolmaster who was exiled to America in 1735 after being charged with embezzlement. In 1751, two years after the death of his father, Peale and his now-impoverished family moved to Annapolis, where Mrs. Peale found employment as a seamstress to the local gentry. Peale’s artistic inclinations emerged around this time, when he began making copies of prints and drew needlework patterns for his mother.
In 1755, Peale was apprenticed to Nathan Walters, a local saddle maker and tradesman. After completing his service in 1762, he married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), a daughter of a prominent landowner, and opened a shop specializing in carving, metalwork, glasswork, and leatherwork, as well as watch and clocks repairs. (Following Rachel’s death in 1790, Peale was married to Elizabeth de Peyster from 1791 to 1804 and Hannah More from 1804 to 1821.) During that same year, on a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, Peale saw some portraits and landscapes by a southern artist, by the name of Frazier, that he felt were poorly executed. Feeling he could do better himself, he decided to try his hand at painting. On a trip to Philadelphia to buy pigments, Peale acquired a copy of Robert Dossie’s The Handmaid to the Arts (1758), which provided information on techniques relative to painting, engraving, paper-making, and japanning. He then returned to Maryland to pursue his new profession, initially working as a sign painter. In about 1763, Peale received his earliest formal instruction from John Hesselius (1728–1778), an established portraitist from Philadelphia who was active in Annapolis, giving him a new saddle in exchange for three visits to his studio, where Peale watched him paint a likeness.
Hesselius’s colorful rococo-inspired manner influenced Peale’s early portrait work, but that was soon to change. A member of the radical political party known as the Sons of Freedom, Peale owed money to his Tory creditors. Lacking the funds to repay his debts in full, he fled to Boston in the winter of 1765 to avoid imprisonment. There, Peale had the opportunity to visit the painting rooms of the late John Smibert (1688–1751), the first portraitist of importance in Colonial America, where he saw examples of Smibert’s work, as well as copies of Old Master paintings that were finer than anything he had seen before. While in Boston, Peale also met John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), the preeminent American portraitist of the day who encouraged him in his endeavor to become a professional artist. Copley’s sophisticated style, with its emphasis on clear, smoothly modeled forms and naturalistic poses, impressed Peale so much that he, too, began working in an aesthetic characterized by a direct realism.
Returning to Annapolis in the fall of 1766, Peale resumed his business as a limner with great success––so much so that a group of supportive gentlemen, including Peale’s friend, John Beale Bordley, and the barrister Charles Carroll, raised the funds that allowed him to go to London, in early 1767, to study with the American expatriate painter, Benjamin West (1738–1820). As well as helping him improve his skills in drawing the figure and introducing him to fashionable portraiture of the Georgian era, West brought Peale into contact with such notables as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin Franklin. During this period, Peale also explored other modes of creative expression, including sculpture and engraving. He became especially adept in the art of miniature painting, which formed an essential part of his income and allowed him to lengthen his stay in London. Seeking to better himself on all levels, Peale also studied French, worked on his penmanship, visited cultural institutions, and even upgraded his wardrobe.
In 1768, Peale executed his first major commission: a full-length allegorical portrait of the English statesman William Pitt, Lord Chatham (1768; Westmoreland County Museum and Library, Montross, Virginia), which he translated into a mezzotint. One year later, he returned to Annapolis and recommenced his work as a limner, creating oil portraits and miniatures in watercolor. As a result of his studies with West, Peale’s technique was now much more refined. However, he deliberately avoided the romantic mannerisms and painterly brushwork associated with contemporary British portraitists such as Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Aware that his customers––the provincial gentry of Maryland and its environs––preferred a less mannered and more straightforward interpretation of themselves and their family members, he adhered to a simple, linear style that served him well.
Peale’s approach brought him a steady stream of commissions from high-born Marylanders and Pennsylvanians, among them Carroll, John Cadwalader, and Edward Lloyd. In view of his vehement opposition to British control in the colonies, it seems fitting that he also had the distinction of being the first artist to paint a life portrait of George Washington, executing a likeness (Washington-Custis-Lee Collection, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia) of the young colonel at Mount Vernon in 1772. Although Washington was initially a reluctant subject, Peale’s charm and enthusiasm secured his cooperation, and over the course of two decades, Washington sat for him on seven occasions. In consideration of his impressive roster of clients, it is not surprising that in the wake of Copley’s departure for England in 1774, Peale became the foremost portraitist in the colonies, a position he maintained well into the early 1790s.
In early 1776, Peale made a pivotal career decision by settling in Philadelphia, where he remained for the rest of his life. A fervent patriot, he made gunpowder at his home and then became an officer in the Philadelphia militia for three years, participating in both the battles of Trenton (December 25, 1776) and Princeton (January 3, 1777). However, Peale had no real taste for war (he later became a pacifist). In 1779, he returned to Philadelphia and played his part in the fight for freedom by joining a radical political group known as the “Furious Whigs” and serving a term in the Pennsylvania Assembly.
