GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Charles Willson Peale—Metropolitan Museum, N. Y.
MAKERS OF AMERICAN ART
Charles Willson Peale
THREE
Peale has been a well known name in American art for one hundred and fifty years. Charles Willson Peale, who lived from 1741 to 1827, was celebrated especially for his portraits of Washington and other famous men of the time. James Peale, his brother, who lived during about the same period, painted two portraits of Washington, one of which is in possession of the New York Historical Society, and the other in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. He also made a number of landscapes and historical pictures. Rembrandt Peale, the son of Charles Willson Peale, lived from 1778 until 1860. He too was a portrait painter, and among his works is an equestrian portrait of Washington, now in Independence Hall. Two brothers of Rembrandt Peale were artists likewise.
So when anyone speaks of the “American painter Peale” some further definition is needed, and when a portrait of Washington by Peale is mentioned it is important to know which Peale was the painter.
Charles Willson Peale, the most celebrated of them all, was born in Queen Anne County, Maryland, in April, 1741. His boyhood was spent at Chestertown, and then at Annapolis, where at thirteen years he was apprenticed to a saddler. He was twenty-three years old before he began to study art. His first teacher was a Swedish painter, Hessellius. Peale’s progress was rapid. He sought out the master painter, John Singleton Copley, in Boston, studied under him for three years, then went to London and became a pupil of Benjamin West. In 1770 he established himself in Philadelphia, and his studio soon became famous. Two years after he reached Philadelphia he painted a three-quarter-length picture of Washington in the uniform of a Virginian military colonel. This is the earliest known portrait of the great commander. It is now in the chapel of Washington and Lee University.
Peale painted a number of paintings of Washington and two miniatures of Mrs. Washington. When the Revolution broke out the artist turned soldier, raising a militia company of which he was finally made captain, and, as such, fought in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, and Germantown. He afterward entered the Pennsylvania Assembly, where he was known as one of the first abolitionists. He voted against slavery, and freed his own slaves.
Beloved and esteemed, Peale lived to be eighty-six years old, enjoying a distinction in art shared only by a few other American painters. His name is identified chiefly with portraits of Washington. By an odd coincidence, the month and day of his death were the same as that of Washington’s birth. He died at his home near Germantown on February 22, 1827.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1. No. 45, SERIAL No. 45
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION