Museum Collections

Conceived in the early 1770s, Charles Willson Peale's (1741-1827) depiction of his family was the most ambitious portrait undertaken by a colonial American artist up to that time. As a tour de force of artistic conception and technique, it went far to establish Peale as a master portraitist. The warmth of family ties that one finds in the letters and diaries of the Peale family is very much in evidence in the portrait. The theme of love and friendship is underscored by the subject of the painting on the easel at the left, which depicts three maidens signifying the "Concordia Animae" or "agreement of the spirits." The artist appears at left, holding his palette and supervising the drawing made by his brothers, St. George and James. Seated in the middle of the scene is Rachel Brewer Peale, the artist's first wife, and their daughter, Margaret. To the right sit the artist's mother, Margaret, his sister, Elizabeth, and his daughter, Eleanor. Standing behind the table are the artist's sister, Margaret Jane and the Peales' family nurse, Peggy Durgan, while the artist's dog Argus, sits in front of the table. The three portrait busts depict Peale's teacher, Benjamin West, Peale, and one of Peale's earliest patrons, the Virginia-born lawyer Edmund Jennings. The table contains a fine still life, bearing an apple peal, intended as a pun on the artist's name, and the artist seldom surpassed his rendering of fabrics in this picture. The family portrait remained in Peale's possession throughout his life. Some thirty-five years after commencing the picture and after he had essentially retired from painting to devote time to his museum, Peale made certain changes to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. He repainted parts of the background, parts of his own likeness, and included the profile of his beloved dog, Argus. By 1813 the portrait was installed in the Peale Museum where it remained until it was purchased in 1854 by Thomas Jefferson Bryan, who donated the painting, along with his entire art collection to the New-York Historical Society in 1867.