1741-1827 Charles Wilson Peale Galleries Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraitures, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. Friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for two years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist. Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1777, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale painted in the trompe l'oeil style,[1] and was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington ever sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and there would be six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full length portrait of "Washington at Princeton" from 1779 sold for $21.3 million dollars - setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later renamed the Peale Museum. This museum is considered the first. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and it was the first to display North American mammoth bones. The display of the mammoth bones entered Peale into a long standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these mammoths (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions. The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world. The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Association. The museum would eventually fail in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.  Related Paintings of Charles Wilson Peale :. | Isabella und John Stewart | Die Familie Edward Lloyd | The Artist in his Museum | Disinterment of the Mastodon | Portrait of James Peale |
Related Artists:
CRANACH, Lucas the Younger
German painter (b. 1515, Wittenberg, d.1586, Weimar) was a German Renaissance artist, known for his woodcuts and paintings. He was a son of Lucas Cranach the Elder who began his career as an apprentice in his father's workshop. Henceforth, his own reputation and fame grew. After his father's death, he assumed control over the workshop. The style of their paintings can be so similar that there have been some difficulties in attribution of their works.
Jan Kupecky
(in German: Johann Kupetzky, in Hungarian: Kupecky Jenos, or Kupeczky Jenos, 1667, Bazin, Royal Hungary (today Slovakia) - 1740, Nernberg, Germany) was a Czech and Slovak portrait painter during the baroque. He was active in Hungary, Slovakia, Vienna and Nernberg. Kupecký, like many people at that time, was the son of Protestant (Czech Brethren) parents from the Czech lands (Mlade Boleslav) who sought refuge in Slovakia (constituting the core of Royal Hungary at that time) from religious persecution by the Catholics. He was born in Pezinok - a town near Bratislava. According to the sources he began his studies with the Swiss painter Benedikt Klaus, who was active in both Vienna and in Royal Hungary. At the age of twenty, Kupecký went on a long Italian study trip. In Rome Prince Aleksander Benedykt Sobieski, the son of the Polish king John III Sobieski, helped him to become famous. He returned to Vienna in 1709, after twenty-two years spent in Venice and Rome. We know very little of his Italian activity as well as his early works and his setting in Vienna. According to his contemporary biographer, the Swiss Johann Caspar Fessli, the Protestant Kupecký, who faithfully clung to his ancestor's religion, remained withdrawn and isolated in Vienna's Catholic milieu, which was under the influence of the court and the aristocracy. However this concept is partly contradicted by the fact that the master had significant courtly commissions while working in Vienna. He painted portraits of various members of the dynasty, Prince Eugene of Savoy, several aristocrats, and, in Karlovy Vary, even of the Russian Czar Peter I. The rich ceuvre of this period comprises a series of gorgeous portraits of Kupecky's family, friends and the painter himself, as well as several persons, whose identity in unknown. In 1733 Kupecký, fearing religious persecution, fled from Vienna to Nernberg with his family and worked there until his death in 1740. As the most significant portrait painter of contemporary Germany, he was commissioned by a large number of German princes, church dignitaries rich merchants and scholars, and his works were popularized by engravings even during his lifetime. Through his pupils and followers Kupecký's influence and artistic example remained alive and widespread for a long time.
emile-Rene Menard
(1861 - 1930) was a French painter born in Paris. From early childhood he was immersed in an artistic environment: Corot, Millet and the Barbizon painters frequented his family home, familiarizing him thus with both landscape and antique subjects. Menard studied at the Academy Jullian from 1880 after having been a student of Baudry, Bouguereau, and Henri Lehmann. He participated in the Salon of the Secession in Munich, and the Salon de la Libre Esthetique in Brussels during 1897. Several personal exhibitions were also devoted to him at the Georges Small Gallery. In 1921 he exhibited in the Twelfth Salon along with Henri Martin and Edmond Aman-Jean. Galleries in Buffalo, New York and Boston, Massachusetts exposed Menard and his art to the United States. However, the numerous commissions that Menard received from the French government crowned his career; for example, the cycle for the Hautes Etudes e la Sorbonne, the Faculte de Droit, and the fresco Atoms for the Chemistry institute, and finally the Caise des Depôts in Marseilles. Menard's art allies a rigorous, clear classicism with a diffuse and dreamlike brushwork. In 1894, Victor Shoe wrote of Menard in l' Art et la Vie (Art and Life): "visions of a pacified, bathed nature, of dawn and of twilight, where the soul seems to immerse itself in the innocence of daybreak, and breathe the divine anointment that comes with the dawn."