Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827)

1767-1769

Oil on canvas

Framed: 37 7/8 × 32 5/8 × 3 7/8 in. (96.2 × 82.9 × 9.8 cm)

Gift of Thomas Jefferson Bryan

1867.293

Charles Willson Peale established himself in the late eighteenth century as one of America's foremost portrait painters, having spent two years abroad in the late 1760s studying his craft in London under the tutelage of the American-born artist, Benjamin West. It was during this period of study that West honored his student by painting this portrait. A man of great energy and encyclopedic interests, Peale gained even greater fame in the 1780s for establishing Peale's Museum in Philadelphia, America's first systematically and scientifically arranged museum of art and natural history. When the museum closed in 1854 and its painting collection was put up for sale, Thomas Jefferson Bryan purchased this and a number of other portraits that the artist and his son, Rembrandt Peale, had painted for the museum's renowned Gallery of Great Men devoted to heroes of the American Revolution and the new republic.

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