Rubens Peale

The artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale named many of his children after painters and scientists, and Rubens Peale held the namesake of seventeenth-century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. Unlike his older brothers, Raphaelle and Rembrandt, Rubens did not become an artist but followed the family’s other business: operating museums of art and science. When his father retired, he became manager of the family’s famous Philadelphia Museum, which included paintings of famous men from the Revolu-tionary War and the early republican period, as well as natural history specimens from across North America. In 1825, Rubens Peale established his own Peale Museum in New York City, and for a brief time, he also managed the museum that his older brother Rembrandt had established in Baltimore.

This portrait, by Rembrandt Peale, emphasizes Rubens Peale’s eyeglasses (he was extremely nearsighted), as does his famous painting of 1801, Rubens Peale with a Geranium, which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.