Rembrandt Peale (1778 - 1860 )

Although never a resident of New Jersey himself, the artist Rembrandt Peale painted a number of notable New Jersey residents and lived in the neighboring states of Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland. Peale was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania on February 22, 1778. He was the fourth child of seven and the second son of Charles Willson Peale. The elder Peale was an American painter, soldier, and naturalist who trained all of his children in drawing and painting. Rembrandt showed real talent at a very young age. He painted his first portrait at the age of 13 and at the age of 17 he was granted a commission, from his father, to paint George Washington. (1) He was able to get three sittings and later called himself "the only painter living who ever saw Washington." The portrait was purchased by Congress and still hangs in the U.S. Capitol.

In 1796 Rembrandt tried to establish a museum of art and natural history in Baltimore, Maryland with his brother Raphaelle, but it was unsuccessful. He then assisted his father Charles Willson Peale with the excavation and assembling of the first complete skeleton of a mastodon ever found in the United States.(2) From 1802 to 1803 Rembrandt Peale traveled to England, where he learned new painterly techniques as seen in his portrait of President Thomas Jefferson. While in London Peale studied under the expatriate American painter Benjamin West, and exhibited at the Royal Academy. He also traveled to Paris twice between 1808 to 1810 to study European painting techniques from the past and present.

When he returned home to America he wanted to "produce art at its highest level in terms of both technical excellence and intellectual ambition."(3) Portraiture became Peale’s strong suit and it brought in most of his steady income. He refined his artistic technique during his European trips but after returning to America he channeled his energy into history paintings, which at the time were a risky choice since it was difficult to find an audience for these time- and money-consuming projects. His work in the area of history painting lasted from 1810 to 1824, and while his historical works were not successful he did at times experience acclaim and financial reward for his work.

In 1814 Peale moved with his family to Baltimore, where he again tried to establish a museum that exhibited his own work along with that of his contemporaries. He was passionate about this museum, believing that "part of his responsibility as an American artist was to educate and sensitize the public to the beauty and values afforded by the arts."(4) The Peale Museum has been restored and is now the Municipal Museum of the city.

In 1822 Peale left Baltimore for New York to escape financial troubles at the museum and other business ventures, leaving his brother Rubens in charge of the museum. While in New York he refocused on painting, working quietly and devotedly for years. In New York, he served as President of the American Academy of Art, succeeding John Trumbull, and was one of the original members of the National Academy of Design. He also was a lithographer, natural-history lecturer, and an accomplished writer who contributed articles to newspapers and wrote two books, one about natural history and one entitled Reminiscences of Art and Artists.

In 1829 Peale sailed for Italy with his son Michel Angelo. The year-long trip "fulfilled his long time desire to visit Italy and study its great painters."(5) Peale returned to America with many projects underway and ideas for many more. Some of those projects included a travel guide for Italy and the copying of more than twenty Old Master works. Along with his new projects and his increasingly extensive work as a copyist, Peale continued to paint portraits into his later years. He also combined the practice of painting landscapes and “fancy pieces.”(6)

Peale spent much time reproducing his own work, including his 1795 portrait of George Washington, which he copied over seventy times. He also began writing and teaching as a way of resolving "the youthful dreams of his artistic career with the realities he acknowledged at middle age."(7) Rembrandt Peale died on October 3, 1860 in Philadelphia. He was an American Neoclassical painter who left behind a legacy of portraiture that is “distinguished in execution, strength of likeness, and the depiction of light and color."(8)

(Joseph Kethley, Spring 2006)

(1) http://www.wm.edu/muscarelle/factsheets/peale.html

(2) Robert Wilson Torchia, Deborah Chotner, and Ellen G. Miles, American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II, p.46.

(3-8) http://www.wm.edu/muscarelle/factsheets/peale.html

Portrait of William Rankin, Sr.

Portrait of William Rankin, Sr., 1834, The Collection of The Newark Museum. Gift of Dr. Walter M. Rankin, 1947.

The portrait above, which depicts William Rankin of Newark, is considered to be “among the finest of Rembrandt Peale’s New Jersey portraits.”(1) According to one source, “traveling to Newark, New Jersey, in 1834, Peale painted a group of stunning portraits of the Rankin family (Newark Museum; private collection), the Gobles (New Jersey Historical Society), and the Penningtons (Newark Museum), businessmen who expanded a beaver-hat manufactory into an international enterprise with holdings in banks, insurance companies, and railroads. Also at the Newark Museum are the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Caleb Halstead Shipman, a shoe manufacturing couple at the time. Beautifully executed works, the Newark portraits reveal Rembrandt at the height of technical proficiency. Their similarity in costume and pose, and absence of individuality, suggest both his command of the medium and an increasingly mechanical approach to the job at hand that perhaps resulted from a loss of interest in taking portraits.”(2)

“The most popular artistic events in Newark were the public exhibitions of panoramas and other large paintings which traveled from city to city, usually showing for a period of weeks, and accompanied by lectures and sometimes by brochures. These showings were open to the public at a fixed admission price. In 1848, one of the most famous of these mural-size paintings was exhibited with great fanfare in Washington Hall in Newark; this was Rembrandt’s ‘Court of Death,’ painted by the artist much earlier, in 1820. The huge picture, called a ‘moral allegory’ by its creator, was based upon a poem by the English clergyman, Bishop Porteus. The Newark newspapers of the period had many articles about the picture, mentioning its measurements and its valuation at $25,000.”(3) Peale’s main theme was painting portraits, although he also painted a number of history paintings as well as landscape paintings. His style is identified primarily with romanticism.

(K.M.C., Spring 2006)

(1) William H. Gerdts, Painting and Sculpture in New Jersey (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964), pp.31-32.pp.80-81.

(2-3) Lillian B. Miller, In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778-1860 (Washington D.C: National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution, 1993), p.222.