Charles Willson Peale: 8 works

'Charles Willson Peale painted a number of self-portraits throughout his career, but this work stands as one of the most complex and revealing of the artist's statements about his art and its close relationship to among such issues as family domesticity, family enterprise, and the educational role of science and art.'

'In the same year that this portrait was painted Peale began his most famous project, a series of portraits of famous men, including several Revolutionary War heroes.'

'Peale shows Bailey proudly holding up a printing block, an emblem of his preeminence in his profession, for the viewer's admiration.'

'A tireless patriot, scientist, and patriarch, Peale established the country's first museums (in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York) and fathered a dynasty of American artists.'

'A tireless patriot, scientist, and patriarch, Peale established the country's first museums (in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York) and fathered a dynasty of American artists. Peale's portraits of three generations of women in the Elliott and O'Donnell families, an illustrious Baltimore mercantile clan, highlight the virtues appropriate to each stage of an eighteenth-century woman's life: a child's innocence, a young matron's beauty and devotion, and the mature piety of a grandmother.'

'Peale was undoubtedly good company for Francis Bailey (accession number 1957.146), who shared his political views.'

'Charles Willson Peale is a monumental figure in the history of American art.'

'Charles Willson Peale painted his friend (and collaborator in experiments to improve rifles during the Revolution) seated before a large reflecting telescope-perhaps the one bequeathed to him by Benjamin Franklin-pointing to a comet in orbit.'