Charles Willson Peale Self-Portrait

Following artistic training in London, Charles Willson Peale recrossed the Atlantic in 1769 to embark on a successful painting career, chiefly in Maryland and Pennsylvania. He is estimated to have painted over a thousand portraits of the powerful and elite, several of which are on view in the adjacent gallery and corridor. Many of Peale’s family members became distinguished artists as well.

In his mid-forties—seven years before painting this self-portrait—Peale turned his attention to cre-ating the young republic’s first scientifically orga-nized museum. Opened in 1786, Peale’s Philadelphia Museum was intended as a democratic site of edu-cation and entertainment, accessible to anyone with the twenty-five-cent admission price. The wide-rang-ing collections included portraits of famous men, models of new inventions, animals preserved by taxidermy, and fossils. The central attraction, a mast-odon skeleton excavated during a scientific expedition directed by Peale, helped prove the existence of prehistoric animals.