Charles
Waterton in his 42nd year, or in other words when he had passed his
41st birthday but not yet attained his 42nd. From the original by
Charles Willson Peale (1). The painting
itself is in the National Portrait Gallery
in London.
Painted
by Peale in 1824, the portrait hung with the portraits of other distinguished
naturalists in Peale's museum in Philadelphia. when the museum was
sold, George Ord purchased the portrait and sent it to the Squire
at Walton Hall. It was no. 162 in the Walton Hall catalogue.
~~~
Extract
from a letter to George Ord from Charles Waterton, Walton Hall, 15th
April 1855.
Our family
returns you its warmest thanks for your much valued present of the
picture, which is doubly dear to me, on account of my personal acquaintance
with old Mr. Peale and his most talented sons. The portrait is in
prime order, quite ready to take its station in what, I would hope,
will prove to be its last resting place. Its adventures westward have
been most singular and still more singular, that it should ultimately
have fallen into the hands of the only gentleman in the United States
who knew how much it would be appreciated in a far distant land to
the eastward
How I lament the breaking up of Peale's invaluable museum! I long
to know into what part of the world the skeleton of the huge mammoth
has been transferred.(2)
Charles
Willson
Peale[or sometimes 'Wilson',
with just one 'l'] (1734 - 1827) was a noted American artist who was
a prominent portrait painter of the Federal period. He was also an
enthusiastic naturalist and established in 1786 a museum of specimens
in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. In 1805 he helped found Philadelphia's
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Born
in Maryland in the year 1741, he was apprenticed to a saddler by the
time he was 13 years of age. However, Peale soon learned that his
real talent lay in painting. Whilst still a saddler, Peale traded
one of his best saddles with artist John Hesselius in exchange for
a few painting lessons. Soon, a distinguished group of Maryland gentleman
had provided Peale with funds to study the trade in England with the
artist Benjamin West. Peale returned to the USA with an impressive
talent for capturing the spirit of his sitters.
In the
course of his long career, Charles Willson Peale painted the portraits
of hundreds of men, women, and children. He was an inventor, a naturalist,
a soldier, and a father to 17 children, many of whom became well-respected
artists in their own day.
In 1775,
Peale moved to Philadelphia where he joined the city's militia as
a private soldier. He rose through the ranks to first lieutenant,
and accompanied his unit to the front in December of 1776. He crossed
the Delaware River from Trenton into Pennsylvania just as the remnants
of Washington's army arrived on the river bank, and later described
their crossing as "the most hellish scene I have ever beheld."
Back
in Philadelphia, Peale served on a number of American revolutionary
committees as well as the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. In 1802,
he made a determined effort to provide a pictorial record of the American
Revolution for future generations. To this end, he established a museum
at Independence Hall to display the portraits he had painted throughout
the war.
His later
years were dominated by a growing interest in natural history and
science, although he continued to paint. Ingenious exhibits of stuffed
animals and birds (as well as the reconstructed skeleton of a mammouth
that Peale himself unearthed) shared the spaces at his museum with
his paintings.
Cover of Public Culture in the Early Republic, Peale's Museum and Its Audience, David R. Brigham, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. ISBN 1-56098-416-3
Sources
1. Essays on Natural History, Charles Waterton,
edited by Norman Moore, 1871.
2. Letter of Charles Waterton, Squire of Walton
Hall, Yorks, edited with Notes by R.A. Irwin, published by Rockliff,
London, 1955.
