Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), a native of Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, was an artist, scientist and naturalist.  Originally apprenticed as a saddle maker, he failed in this business when his Loyalist creditors bankrupted him after he joined the Sons of Liberty. Soon afterward he discovered that he had a gift for painting, particularly portraiture.  He studied with colonial American painters like John Singleton Copley before friends raised the money for him to study with the famous British painter Benjamin West from 1767-1770.

Back in Philadelphia during the American Revolution, he raised troops for the War of Independence, obtaining the rank of captain.   While in the field Peale continued to paint miniature portraits of officers in the Continental Army, and to create maps of military importance (1) as well as sketches (3).  From 1779-1780 he served in the Pennsylvania Assembly, after which he returned to painting full-time.  Peale commissioned paintings for many famous Americans, including Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.  He first painted Washington’s portrait in 1772, but there would be six other sittings, which served as models for nearly 60 Peale portraits of Washington.

Peale gathered his paintings of American leaders together with a wide array of botanical, biological and archaeological specimens in what became the Philadelphia Museum, informally known as the Peale Museum.  The Museum combined Peale’s interest in portraiture with his passion for natural history.  The Peale Museum of art and science was the first public museum in America.

Peale organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801.  Funded and equipped by President Thomas Jefferson, Peale led the expedition to southeastern New York to excavate the bones of three mastodons for the Museum (4).  His Museum eventually became a repository for specimens collected by western expeditions.  He conceived of his museum as a kind of “national university” to educate: “both the learned and unwise.”  To this end he developed and delivered public lectures and presentations suitable for a wide audience.  Admission was relatively low -- an annual ticket could be purchased for one dollar and individual admission was twenty-five cents (5) -- and members included politicians, businessmen and skilled artisans.

A leader in scientific classification and collection arrangement, Peale’s Museum was among to first to adopt the new taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus.  This was a major contrast to other museums that presented their artifacts as mere curiosities of Nature.  Peale’s Museum was also the first to develop marketing and outreach campaigns, as well as to solicit gifts.  One of the donor certificates encouraged patrons with the maxim: “Of grains of sand are mountains made.”

Even though Peale’s Museum was the first of its kind, his inability to gain public funding eventually doomed the enterprise.  After Peale’s death in 1827, the Museum was left to his sons.  But by the 1840s the Museum closed its doors.  Most of the artifacts were divided and sold to showmen such as P.T. Barnum.

1.    Map of British and American Troops, ca. 1776
Peale is known as "the artist of the American Revolution." He not only painted during that period, but he was also a soldier in the Revolution. This bird’s-eye view of troop positions during the New York Campaign shows how he was able to use his skills as an artist to help promote the cause of the Revolution.

2.    Silhouettes
Peale’s Museum attempted to engage the community in a number of ways. One such attempt was the production of silhouette profiles for patrons as they sat.  The page displayed here represents the kind of silhouettes created at the Museum, and is accompanied by a corresponding list of names.

3.    Sketch of Cannon, undated (ca. 1779)
During the Revolutionary War, Peale produced several sketches of the land and objects around him. Because of the decorative device depicted on the cannon, this sketch is thought to be of one captured at Trenton. This sketch was potentially a study for a later portrait of Washington at the Princeton battlefield.

4.    Letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 29, 1801
An early draw for Peale’s Museum was the skeleton of a mammoth. In this letter to Thomas Jefferson, Peale announces the excavation of the bones from Ulster County, New York. The bones of the mammoth were excavated at great expense and trouble and were displayed at Peale’s Museum with considerable excitement. A transcription is presented for the reader’s ease.

5.    “Peale’s Museum” Broadside, 1813
This broadside advertises Peale’s Museum as “the most extensive, useful and interesting in the United States,” and briefly describes what visitors will see in the various rooms. For the twenty-five cent admission fee visitors could see hundreds of natural history specimens and dozens of portrait paintings. Also advertised is the “Profile cutter” who “attends every day and evening,” and who would be responsible for the silhouettes displayed above. 

6.    Hudson River Sketchbook, 1801
During his 1801 journey to John Masten's farm to purchase the skeleton of a mastodon, Charles Willson Peale made seventeen finished and three unfinished sketches of the scenery along the Hudson River in the vicinity of West Point, Fort Clinton, and Fort Putnam. This sketch, “View of the Passage through the high Lands, sailing up the north River” shows the Hudson River as it passes Westchester County, New York and the Hudson Highlands.