The youngest son of Charles Willson Peale was born in Philosophical Hall in November 1799 and given the name Titian Ramsay Peale, after a brother who had died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1798. Educated primarily at home, the young Titian Peale took advantage of his family connections to meet some of America's most prominent naturalists and to attend Caspar Wistar's lectures in anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. A precocious boy, he was apprenticed out at 13 to learn machine manufacturing, but soon returned to take part in the family business, the Philadelphia Museum, learning how to preserve natural historical specimens and take part in management of the museum.

Having inherited his father's artistic, as well as scientific inclinations, Titian Peale began to contribute as an scientific illustrator while still in his teens. His first professional work of note, the six colored plates for the prospectus to Thomas Say's American Entomology (Philadelphia : Mitchell & Ames, 1817), won him a measure of acclaim and election to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. More importantly, it opened the door to further work in natural history. In December of that year, he joined Say, George Ord, and William Maclure on an expedition to the coastal regions of Georgia and Florida, and in 1819, his father helped arrange a spot for him as assistant naturalist on Stephen Harriman Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains, a particularly productive venture. With Say, George Jessup, and Edwin James, among others, the Long party traveled up the Missouri River in the steamboat Western Engineer, before heading up west along the Platte to the front range of the Rockies. They are credited with being the first scientific surveyors of the region.

Upon returning to Philadelphia in 1821, Peale resumed work at the Philadelphia Museum, completing his field drawings and preparing the specimens collected on the expedition. His artistic output rapidly expanded. Peale executed several drawings of new American birds for Charles Lucien Bonaparte's supplement to Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (Philadelphia, 1825-1833), and was hired by Say to prepare 54 colored plates for a three-volume American Entomology (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum, 1824-1828). He exhibited four watercolors at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1822, three from his Long Expedition work, and the fourth of butterflies.

Scientific exploration continued to be a focus for Peale throughout the 1820s and 1830s. In 1825, he returned to south Florida, and from the fall of 1830 through the spring of 1832, he toured the Magdalena River, Colombia, sketching and collecting huge numbers of butterflies and other specimens. His endeavors on these expeditions and his artistic work, more than his relatively few publications, won him election to the American Philosophical Society in 1833 at the young age of 34. The crowning achievement of his career as a naturalist, however, could well have come with his work as assistant naturalist aboard Charles Wilkes' United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842). A circumnavigation of the globe that included stops at places as far flung as Fiji and the Philippines, the northwest Pacific Coast and California, the Wilkes Expedition was one of the most ambitious American expeditions of the mid-century.

Unfortunately for Peale, the Wilkes Expedition was to be a disappointment. A shipwreck in the mouth of the Columbia River cost him his most important specimens, and upon his return to Philadelphia, friction erupted between Peale and Wilkes over credit for the scientific discoveries and publication plans. Peale's Mammalia and Ornithology (Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 1848) appeared in a limited edition in 1848, but was later suppressed by Wilkes, with John Cassin's Mammalogy and Ornithology (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1858) taking its place.

After these experiences and a period of difficulty supporting his family as an artist or naturalist, Peale took a position as an assistant examiner in the U.S. Patent Office in 1849. Though never free of the usual political intrigues associated with a governmental post, he remained in the Patent Office until his retirement in 1873.

During this last portion of his career, Peale continued painting, but took strong interest in photography, both in his work at the Patent Office and outside, and he became a founding member of the Amateur Photographic Exchange Club, the first club of its sort in the United States. His desire to produce a massively illustrated work on the butterflies of North America became his scientific focus, however it was never completed and never made it to press. Peale died in Philadelphia in 1885.

The Titian Ramsay Peale Sketches consist of about 550 pencil drawings, pen and ink sketches, watercolor paintings, and lithographs representing the bulk of Peale's artistic work throughout his career.

Beginning with a series of entomological sketches made for Thomas Say's prospectus when he was 17, the collection includes a particularly strong suite of sketches made on the Long Expedition (1819-1821), less thorough documentation of his expedition to South America (1830-1832) and as a member of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), and a few samples of his work for other naturalists, including Charles Lucien Bonaparte and Thomas Say, and for U.S. mint (1835-1836). There is relatively little to show for Peale's work after the end of the Wilkes Expedition, apart from a few sketches of bison from the 1870s and a series eight small oil paintings of Seven Mile Beach, New Jersey, 1873, and two oils of forest scenes.

Native American Images note : Seventeen original pencil & watercolor sketches by Titian Peale of Oto (Siouan) and Penobscot Indians as drawn during his natural history expeditions of 1819-1821, 1829. The images, incomplete to highly detailed, reflect bison hunts, a village along the Platt River, a bark canoe, and portraits. All have companion negatives and are referenced in the APS Freeman guide to the American Indian. Other sources include: Jessie J. Poesch’s Titian Ramsey Peale, 1799-1885... (1961); The Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports (1830-1834). Other images: ten photocopies of journal sketches from the Library of Congress Peale collection of Oto Indians, engravings of Benjamin West’s painting Penn’s treaty, and an engraving drawn by M.E.D. Brown from a Peale sketch included in the above mentioned The Cabinet of Natural History. Note: check both the Titian Ramsey Peale and Peale-Sellers collections.

With a few exceptions, the entirety of this collection has been digitized. Links to the digital versions of the sketches are included in the inventory. You may also view a gallery of all images here.

1. Sketches number 16-32 were originally housed in a sketchbook with a cover that read: "T.R. Peale's Entomological Sketch Book 1817. Dr. T. R. Peale, 1106 Girard Street Philadelphia."
2. Numbers 71-82 are sketches, with some tracings, of bison, probably executed for Peale's 1870s oil panoramas of the west (see Poesch, p.109 figs. 47, 48). They have been placed, arbitrarily, with the drawings of bison Peale executed while on the Long Expedition.
3. Numbers 178a-m are engravings from Thomas Say's American Entomology,1824-1828. Plates 2,3,5,6,8,9,11-13,15-17, were all drawn by Peale. Plates 1,4,7,10 and 14 (not present) were not drawn by Peale and thus are "missing" from this series. Engravers include Francis Kearny, George Lang, James B. Longacre, Cornelius Tiebout.
4. Numbers 208-219 correspond to Peale's moose hunting trip to Maine in 1830. C.f. Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports, 1830, pp. 19-23 ( Call no.: 505 Cll vol. 1)
5. Numbers 233a-h, are lithographs of butterflies, moths, caterpillars, etc. (some colored) that may have been prepared for Peale's 1833 work Lepidoptera Americana (see bibliography in Poesch's biography). 233d-g, by Childs & Inman Press.
6. Numbers 300-312 are illustrations by an unidentified artist. Nos. 300, 303, and 304-306 are of prisoners, and may be sketches from the penal settlement on the island of Zamboanga, Philippines, which the Wilkes' Expedition visited on Friday, 28th of January, 1841. See, Poesch, p.201.

Provenance

Acquired in accessions in 1955, 1956, and 1981.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Titian Ramsay Peale Sketches, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Recatalogued by rsc, 2001.

Alternate formats available

Images of most sketches are available for purchase by contacting the Manuscripts Department. Black and white 8x10" photographic prints are $15.00; 4x5" color transparencies are $40.00 (transparencies must be returned within six months). Postage and handling and publication fees may also apply.

Related material

The APS houses numerous manuscript collections relating to Titian Ramsay Peale, his father, Charles Willson Peale, and brothers, Rubens, Rembrandt, Raphaelle, and James, and many other members of the Peale and Sellers families.

Bibliography

Naval History Note

Includes a number of sketches made by Peale during the United States Exploring Expedition, which may be of interest to naval historians.

Early American History Note

This portion of the Peale Family Collection contains 221 Titian Ramsey Peale sketches. There is a detailed table of contents that describes each image. Most of the images depict elements of the natural world. There are many sketches of animals and landscapes. Some are in pencil, while others are in watercolor.

Genre(s)

• Art
• Engravings.
• Lithographs
• Negatives
• Sketches.

Geographic Name(s)

• New Jersey--Pictorial works
• Philippines--Pictorial works
• South America--Pictorial works
• Washington (D.C.)--Pictorial works
• West (U.S.)--Pictorial works

Subject(s)

• American bison--Pictorial works
• Animals--Pictorial works.
• Antelopes--Pictorial works
• Birds--Pictorial works
• Botany--Pictorial works
• Butterflies--Pictorial works.
• Caterpillars--Pictorial works
• Coin design.
• Deer--Pictorial works
• Eastern Woodlands Indians
• Fishes--Pictorial works
• Indians of North America--Maine
• Indians of North America--Nebraska
• Indians of North America--Pictorial works
• Insects--Pictorial works
• Landscape drawing
• Literature, Arts, and Culture
• Moose--Pictorial works
• Natural history
• Ornithology--Pictorial works
• Oto indians
• Penobscot Indians
• Plains Indians
• Siouan Indians
• Squirrels--Pictorial works
• Stephen H. Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1819-1820)
• United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
• Wolves--Pictorial works
• Zoology--Pictorial works