Hidden History: Queen Anne’s County Roots: Renowned Revolutionary Era Artist Charles Willson Peale

At the intersection of Route 18 and Wright’s Neck Road, a short walk from the Museum of Eastern Shore Life, stands a lone historic marker noting the 1741 birthplace of early America’s preeminent portrait painter, Charles Willson Peale.  Known also as an inventor, scientist, naturalist, soldier, and politician, Peale created some of the most well-known portraits of the Revolutionary Era, including those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton.

 

Peale created portraits of lesser-known figures as well:  One well-loved example is his painting of the once-enslaved West African Muslim entrepreneur and property owner named Mamadou Yarrow (also known as Yarrow Mamout), an image described by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as “a rare early representation of ethnic and religious diversity in the United States”; and he created a portrait of Thayendanegea, or Joseph Brant, a Mohawk military and political leader who fought against the colonists during the Revolutionary War.  All of these portraits are among the many Peale works displayed in such places as the White House, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.

 

A number of sources state that Peale was born in Chester, Maryland. Instead, the historic marker is likely correct, as Centreville was then known as Chester Mill:
Predating Centreville at this location was the community of Chester Mill, established in the second quarter of the eighteenth century and named for a mill situated near the south entrance to the present town, where the road intersects the south branch of the Corsica River.   — National Park Service Register of Historic Places, Centreville Historic District, 2004

 

 

Charles Willson Peale’s father, also named Charles, was 27 years old in 1736 when England transported him to Virginia after he, as deputy secretary at the general Post Office in London, embezzled state funds.  The alternative to being sent off to the colonies was to be executed.

Later that year, the senior Peale was living in Queen Anne’s County and working as a teacher (master) at a free school located near the birthplace of his firstborn. While starting over in the colonies was certainly preferable to death, teaching was a step down for Charles, Sr., even though free schools were privately funded and served primarily upper class children, and his position allowed he and his family to meet people of influence, which paid off.  By 1743, the Peale family—father Charles, mother Margaret Triggs, Charles Willson, and his younger sister Margaret Jane—was residing in Chestertown, where Charles, Sr.  had obtained employment by the Kent County Free School, the predecessor to Washington College.

Three more children joined the family before Charles, Sr. died in 1750 at age 41. It was then that Margaret, an Annapolis native, took her five children back across the Bay, reportedly with the assistance of John Beale Bordley, a former student of her husband’s and friend of her son, Charles. Bordley was an agriculturalist, author, attorney, and, later, judge who had married the sister-in-law of William Paca, Elizabeth Chew. Through Elizabeth, he inherited half of Wye Island (the other half owned by Mary Chew and William Paca).

In Annapolis, Margaret worked as a seamstress. The young Charles began an apprenticeship with a saddler, and by 1762, with the help of James Tilghman, he started his own business making saddles and harnesses, repairing carriages and even watches, as well as upholstering and silversmithing. That year, he also married Rachel Brewer.

Around this time, Charles Willson Peale grew more interested in or serious about painting. In 1763, he began studying under a popular Mid-Atlantic portrait artist, John Hesselius.  Financial troubles helped to propel Peale toward portraiture to make a living. This change occurred with assistance once again from John Beale Bordley, who helped to raise funds to send Peale to England to study under self-taught artist Benjamin West.  Three years later, Charles returned to Maryland to his wife, Rachel, and young son, Raphaelle.  Back in Annapolis, he found the area’s elite eager to hire him to paint their portraits. His reputation grew, and in 1772, he painted the earliest known portrait of George Washington.

 

As the Revolutionary War intensified, the Peale family moved to Philadelphia, where Charles enlisted in the militia and served as a first lieutenant, engaging in the Battles of Trenton and Princeton (his brother James was an officer with the Maryland Line). He was appointed an infantry captain in 1777. The next year, he joined a commission that   confiscated property from British Loyalists, and later served in the Pennsylvania legislature. The 1783 Treaty of Paris officially ended the war, and the following year, Charles Willson Peale opened the first museum in the United States, the Philadelphia Museum.

Charles Willson Peale traveled regularly from Philadelphia to Annapolis and the Eastern Shore. He painted a number of Eastern Shore natives and residents, including his friend John Beale Bordley, William Paca, the Edward Lloyd family, and Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman.

 

As he grew older, Charles Willson Peale remained involved with the Philadelphia Museum, adding a well-known natural history collection which included a mastodon skeleton. His thirst for art, exploration, and knowledge did not waver. He wrote the autobiographical The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and his Family, gave lectures and wrote essays on a variety of topics, and continued to paint. Charles was widowed three times and was the father of numerous children, several of whom followed in his artistic footsteps.

In addition to the family of artists he left behind when he died in 1827 at age 85, he left the world images of Revolutionary Era figures and scenes—images that helped to tell the story of the making of a new nation.

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