Rubens Peale
Encyclopedia
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as establishing one of the first museums....
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Life
He was the fourth son of Charles Willson Peale. Rubens had weak eyes and, unlike most of his siblings, did not set out to be an artist. He traveled with the family in 1802 to Britain, but was unable to travel on the continent with the outbreak of war. In 1803 he attended classes at the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
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He became Director of his father's museum in Philadelphia from 1810 to 1821, and then of the Peale Museum
Peale Museum
The Peale Museum, also known as the Municipal Museum of Baltimore, was a museum of paintings and natural history, located in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It occupied the first building in the Western Hemisphere to be designed and built as a museum. The Peale Museum was created by Charles Willson Peale...
in Baltimore, which he ran with his brother, Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson...
. To promote the museum, he installed gas lighting illumination in the museum.
He opened his own museum in New York on October 26, 1825, (along with the opening of the Erie Canal). By 1840, Peale would change the name to the New York Museum of Natural History and Science. The Panic of 1837 sent his museum into debt. It competed with the American Museum
Barnum's American Museum
Barnum's American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York City, USA, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was owned by famous showman P.T. Barnum and his partner and original owner, John Scudder. Prior to their partnership, the museum was known as Scudder's American...
, of P.T. Barnum. Rubens had to sell his entire collection to Barnum in 1843. He moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania
Pottstown, Pennsylvania
Pottstown is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States northwest of Philadelphia and southeast of Reading, on the Schuylkill River. Pottstown was laid out in 1752–53 and named Pottsgrove in honor of its founder, John Potts. The old name was abandoned at the time of the...
. In 1837, he retired to his father-in-law, George Patterson's estate near Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania
Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania
Schuylkill Haven is a borough in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, four miles south of Pottsville and north-west of Philadelphia, in the United States. The borough's population was 5,548 as of the 2000 census. Schuylkill Haven is situated along the Schuylkill River for which it is named...
, and lived as a country gentleman, at Woodland Farm. He experimented with Mesmerism, and wrote to his brother Rembrandt about it.
In October 1855, he began keeping a Journal, and he turned to still life painting, as an extension of his interest in natural history. In 1864, he returned to Philadelphia, and studied landscape painting with Edward Moran. In the last ten years of his life, he produced one hundred thirty paintings.
Family
Mary Jane Peale
Mary Jane Peale was an American painter. She was the child of Rubens and Eliza Burd Patterson Peale, the only daughter among seven children, and was the granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale...
(1826–1902) (who also was a painter), James Burd, and Edward Burd. Charles Willson Peale (Feb 15, 1821 – Sept 30, 1871) married Harriet Friel (b. Aug 11, 1830), they had a son Albert Charles Peale, (Apr 1, 1849) who was a geologist with the US Geological Survey.
Diary Entries on the Death of Lincoln
April 15, 1865:sad news of the murder of President Lincon [sic], he was shot while attending a performance at Fords' Theater last night in Washington. The assassin entered his private box and shot him in back of his head and then escaped, the assassin's name is ______,
April the 22nd:
The corpse arrived this afternoon from Harrisburg and it was dark, and although the square was brilliantly illuminated with greek lights each side of the great walk Red, Blue & White, which made a most brilliant appearance and lighted up the wholes square & streets yet much of the procession near lost to us. The crowd was so dence in Walnut Street that police could scarcely keep the crowd back.
April the 23rd:
a fine opportunity of viewing the corpse and decorations of the hall, which was totally covered with black cloth except the statue & portraits of General Washington & wife. I staid [sic] one hour and left Mary gazing on the corpse, she intending to paint a portrait of him...
Legacy
In 1985, the National Gallery of ArtNational Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
paid $4.07 million of a portrait of him, with a geranium, by his brother Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson...
. American art history and ophthalmology scholars have studied the painting, and have theories for this unusual depiction of glasses. In 2007, Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum is Princeton University's gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1882, it now houses over 72,000 works of art that range from antiquity to the contemporary period...
bought Still Life With Watermelon, in honor of John Wilmerding
John Wilmerding
John Currie Wilmerding, , is an American art professor and curator whose writings on American art have made him one of the most defining and highly regarded figures within the field.- Biography :...
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External links
- Peale, Rubens, Papers. 1802-03., Originals and microfiche in The Collected Letters of Charles Willson Peale and His Family. Lillian B. Miller, ed. Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Microform, 1980. England.
- PEALE COLLECTION, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
- Rubens Peale
- Mary Jane Peale and Peale family selected papers, (ca. 1815)-1897, Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Art
- Rubens Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Rubens Peale, The Athenaeum
- Peale Family Collection, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, The Winterthur Library
- Rembrandt Peale (artist), 1778-1860, Rubens Peale with a Geranium
- Rubens Peale, ca. 1800, Raphaelle Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Rubens Peale (1784–1865), "Still Life with Watermelon,” 1865
- Mrs. Rubens Peale (Eliza Patterson Peale), ca. 1821, Charles Willson Peale
- Elizabeth Burd Patterson Peale, Mary Jane Peale, 1827-1902, painter
- Eliza Burd Patterson Peale, 1860, Mary Jane Peale (American, 1827-1902), Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art