American artist Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) was born in Chester, Maryland. His father died when Charles was thirteen, and he was apprenticed to a saddle maker. He opened his own saddle shop, but it failed. He tried a career fixing clocks. That failed too. At last, he turned to painting, and he became one of America’s premier painters.
Peale’s talent was recognized by artists John Singleton Copley and John Hesselius. With their help and that of Peale’s friend John Beale Bordley, they raised the funds to send Peale to London to study with American artist Benjamin West from 1767 until 1769. The painting “John Beale Bordley” (1770) (80”x58’’) (National Gallery of Art) is one of several portraits Peale painted of the Bordley family. Both men were supporters of the Sons of Liberty. Bordley commissioned this portrait to show America’s strength and desire for equal treatment by the British. It was to be exhibited in London.
John Beale Bordley, the ancestor of the Bordley family whose store at the corner of High and Cross Streets in Chestertown that today houses the Historical Society of Kent County, owned a plantation on Wye Island. The peach tree at his right and the packhorses at the far left of the portrait were symbols of American abundance. The flock of sheep grazing beneath the peach tree demonstrated that America was not dependent on English sheep and British woolens. Bordley was a trained lawyer, judge, and member of the Governor’s Council. He stands with left arm resting on a law book and his right hand raised as if he were debating colonial rights under British law that often were ignored. The torn legal document at this his feet signifies his regard for British law. Completing the scene, a statue of British Liberty holds the scale of justice. At the base of the statue is American jimson weed, also known as Devil’s snare, a poisonous plant, to remind the British that the attack on American liberties could be deadly.
Peale returned from London in 1769 and settled in Annapolis. He moved to Philadelphia in 1775 and set up a painting studio. He painted John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin, among others. Peale painted Washington from life as early 1772, when Washington was a British Colonel. A member of the Sons of Liberty since 1764, Peale served in the Pennsylvania Militia holding the rank of captain by1776. He recruited for the army and participated in several battles. During the Revolutionary War, he made miniature portraits of many of the officers. After the war, he painted their portraits when he was able to return to painting full-time.
“Washington, Lafayette, and Tilghman at Yorktown” (1784) (93’’x64’’) (Maryland State House) was commissioned by the Maryland Legislature in 1783. This 1784 portrait is similar to the 1779 of Washington at the victories of Princeton and Trenton. Peale added the Marquis de Lafayette and Lieutenant Colonel Tench Tilghman, born in Maryland. Tilghman served as Washington’s aide de camp from the Battle of Trenton to the Siege at Yorktown. Tilghman holds the rolled document announcing Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. Washington entrusted Tilghman to deliver the news to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Tilghman wears his ceremonial sword that now is on display at the Maryland State House. In the distance, soldiers carry the American and Bourbon French flag. Tilghman married and returned to his mercantile business in Baltimore after the war. On Tilghman’s death, Washington wrote to Tilghman’s father, “I can assure you Sir, with much truth, that after I had opportunities of becoming well acquainted with his worth, no man enjoyed a greater share of my esteem, affection and confidence than Colo. Tilghman…”
Peale was commissioned to paint over 60 portraits of Washington, seven from life, and he painted over 1100 portraits, some of them of his family. “The Staircase Group’’ (1795) (90”x40”) (Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art) depicts two of his sons, Raphealle and Titian Ramsey. Employing the artistic device known as trompe-l’œil (French for fool the eye), Peale depicts the two young men climbing a circular staircase, the stairsteps starting at the floor of the Museum. A trompe-l’œil colonial dollar, crumpled on the first painted step, lies ready for someone to pick up.
Peale married three times. His first wife Rachel bore him ten children, and his second wife Elizabeth bore him six, his third wife Hannah helped raise them. Peale’s love of art is evident; he named most of his children after famous artists or famous persons: his sons after famous painters Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Titian; his daughters after famous painters Angelica Kauffmann, Sophonisba Anguissola, Rosalba Carriera, and Sibylla Miriam. His sons Benjamin Franklin and Charles Lennaeus Peale were named for the scientists. Some of Peale’s children were successful painters. Peale’s sons Rembrandt and Rubens founded the Peale Museum in Baltimore in 1813. Peale’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Emerson Callister-Peale taught miniature painting at the Kent County Free School. She and Sarah Callister were hired in 1873 by Washington College in Chestertown to teach painting and drawing. They were the first women to be hired as teachers by an American college or university. Elizabeth designed the Great Seal of Washington College.
Peale shared with both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin a deep interest in natural phenomena. A friend sent him an 1801 news clipping about large bones found on a farm near Montgomery, New York. Jefferson tried to secure the find, but he was not successful. Peale acquired the rights to the excavation from land owner John Marsten for $200, new gowns for his wife and daughters, a gun for his son, and an additional $100. Peale arrived with 35 paid workers who carefully excavated the bones from the water-logged pit. He devised a pulley system to remove the water. He took great care to preserve the bones, developing methods that were not used before. In the painting, Peale wears yellow trousers, a white shirt, and a black coat. He stands with members of his family at the right side of the painting. He and his son Rembrandt hold a large drawing of one of the bones. In his diary, Peale told Marston, “…compleating the skeleton was an object of vast magnitude with me…” The exhumed mastodon was reported to be the world’s first fully articulated skeleton.
Peale founded the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1805. It was one of America’s first museums, housing hundreds of portraits, thousands of artifacts, fossils, life-sized wax statues, and archaeological objects. In “The Artist in His Museum” (1822) (104’’x80”) (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts), Peale proudly displays the long gallery, then on the 2nd floor of Independence Hall. The skeleton of the mastodon is set behind the red velvet drape; several large bones and a turkey fill the foreground space. His palette and brushes are placed on a green cloth on the table. Mounted birds can be seen on row of shelves, an American eagle at the top.
“What more pleasing prospect can be opened to our view than the boundless field of nature? Not only comprehending the inhabitants of earth, sea, and air; but earth, sea, and air themselves—representing an inexhaustible fund for amusing and useful enquiry. (C.W. Peale, lecture, University of Pennsylvania, November 16, 1799)
Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.
Cynthia B. Saunders says
Thank you Beverly for your deep dive into the life of Charles Willson Peale…..few of our residents know of his connection to the Kent Free School, later Washington College – his father came here to be headmaster after a higher salary was offered than by Queen Anne’s County! – and even fewer know that Tench Tilghman, Washington’s Aide-de-Camp, tasked Peale, then serving in the colonial army, with escorting his father James Tilghman, back from Philadelphia to live out his life in Chestertown after his Tory allegiance caused him trouble in Philadelphia. (James Tilghman is buried at Old St. Paul’s churchyard.)