PEALE, CHARLES WILLSON

(b. Queen Anne’s country, Maryland, 15 April 1741; d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 22 February 1827)

museum direction.

Eldest of the five children of Charles Peale, sometime clerk in the General Post Office, London, and Margaret Triggs of Annapolis, Maryland, Peale grew up in Chestertown, Maryland, where his father was master of the Kent Country school. Deciding at the age of twenty-one that painting might be more profitable than saddlemaking, for which he had been trained, he sought instruction from John Hesselius in Maryland and from John Singleton Copley in Boston. Thereafter he displayed such skill in his portraits of the Maryland gentry that in 1767 several joined to send him abroad for two years to study under Benjamin West, who was later historical painter to George III. In 1776 Peale settled in Philadelphia, the largest and wealthiest city in the British colonies. During the American Revolution, Peale, a zealous patriot, served as a militia officer in the campaign of Trenton and Princeton (1776–1777) and the defense of Philadelphia (1777–1778); and as a “furious Whig” he took a prominent role in political controversies of the period. All the while he continued to paint — Washington, his officers, and the men of the Revolution are known today largely through Peale’s eyes. With the return of peace Peale’s artistic genius, mechanical skill, and patriotic vision of America’s future found expression in designs for grand public displays, such as Philadelphia’s Procession of 4 July 1788.

A commission to make drawings of bones of a prehistoric creature from the banks of the Ohio River gave Peale the idea of establishing a natural history museum. It was first in the United States, for the American Museum of Pierre Eugène du Simitière, although containing natural history specimens, was primarily historical. The museum was opened in Peale’s house at Third and Lombard Streets in 1786; thereafter, without entirely giving up painting, he devoted his principal energies to it. It was moved in 1794 to the hall of the American Philosophical Society, the members of which took a warm interest in it and seemed thereby to endorse Peale’s plans; and in 1802 it was established in the State House (now Independence Hall). Most of the exhibits were gifts or deposits (for instance, specimens collected by Lewis and Clark presented by President Jefferson); others were secured by Peale himself, most notably the nearly complete skeletons of two mastodons from Orange County, New York, in 1801. When the museum collections were sold in 1848 and 1854 the catalog listed 1,824 birds, 250 quadrupeds, 650 fish, 135 reptiles, lizards, and tortoises, 269 portraits, and thirty-three cases of shells.

Peale’s museum demonstrated sound principles of scientific exposition. The exhibits were arranged according to the modified Linnaean system, from fossils and insects to “animal man” (although Peale never obtained a preserved specimen of Homo sapiens); and as far as possible they were shown in their natural forms, attitudes, and backgrounds, which Peale as painter readily provided, Special attention was directed to likenesses between species and to distinctive features: a rattlesnake, for example, was mounted with its jaws open and a glass was placed so that all might see the fangs and venom sacs.

Peale viewed the museum as an element in a reformed system of education suitable for virtuous republicans and hoped it would become a national institution, comparable with the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, with salaried staff lecturers laboratories, and publications. This would have required greater support than the federal government was prepared to give, Peale had, therefore to depend on admission charges, which, although they produced a satisfactory income, constantly exposed the museum — especially when Peale was not personally in charge —to pressures to compromise with scientific integrity. The museum was a school for such young naturalists as Alexander Wilson, John D. Godman and Richard Harlan, who drew upon its collections for their earliest researches. Similar institutions were established in Baltimore and New York by Peale’s sons Rubens and Rembrandt; and catchpenny imitations which did not scorn, as Peale’s museum did, to “catch the eye of the gaping multitude,” sprang up throughout the country after 1820. These cabinets of jumbled curiosities gave a few young men an introduction to science, but they misled many as to science’s nature and scope and fell far short of Peale’s goal.

Peale was married three times; to Rachel Brewer of Annapolis in 1762; to Elizabeth DePeyster of New York, in 1791; and to Hannah Moore of Philadelphia, in 1805. From the two first marriages he had seventeen children, of whom eleven reached maturity. Most of them displayed artistic talents of high order; two — Titian Ramsay and Franklin — achieved distinction in natural history and mechanics, respectively.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peale’s paintings have been listed and illustrated in Charles Coleman Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale” and “Charles Willson Peale With Patron and Populace,” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s.42 pt. 1 (1952), and 59 , pt. 3 (1969), respectively. The contents of the museum are described in Peale and A. F. M. J. Palisot de Beauvois, A Scientific and Descriptive Catalogue of the Peale’s Museum (Philadelphia, 1796); and Peale’s Guide to the Philadelphia Museum (Philadelphia, 1804). Peale explained his purpose and philosophy in Introduction to a Course of Lectures on Natural History (Philadelphia, 1800). His letter books, diary, autobiography, and other MSS are in the American Philosophical Society library.

Charles Coleman Sellers, Charles Willson Peale (New York, 1969), based upon a lifetime of study, is a sufficient introduction to, as well as the last authority on, the subject and its sources.

Whitfield J. Bell, JR.