The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family
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Volume 5: The Autobiography of Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale; Edited by Lillian Miller, Sidney Hart, David C. Ward, Lauren E. Brown, Sara C. Hale, and Leslie K. Reinhardt
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Format: ClothPrice: $115.00
Peale begins by describing his difficult early years as an apprentice to a saddlemaker, and he then tells how he became an artist, one who eventually painted more than one thousand portraits of the generation that won American independence and established the Republic. He writes of his service in the Philadelphia militia during the American Revolution and of his fighting at the Battle of Princeton. He explains his involvement in Philadelphia’s radical republican politics and the difficulties this caused his family. He discusses his involvement in the founding of such cultural institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and his museum of natural history and art, the latter an institution he hoped would be his legacy. He recounts his experiences as a farmer and agrarian reformer and as an inventor (of fireplaces, a vapor bath, and the first American bridge design). Finally he includes a great deal of material on his wives and children, providing a matchless account of an American family in the early Republic.
Published for the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
“An outstanding archival work involving art, medicine, and natural science via a memorable autobiography of the Revolutionary period, Peale’s autobiography, . . . provides invaluable personal commentary from a reliable and alert participant witnessing events at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. . . . The book, which is stimulating reading, advances the range of today’s American studies.”—Choice
“[A]n expertly edited book. . . . It is no exaggeration to state that the Selected Papers has contributed enormously to the surge of Peale scholarship over the past two decades. Important articles, dissertations, and exhibitions would simply have been unthinkable without the rich expanse of primary documentation that these volumes have made available. The Autobiography presents an exciting new source of fodder to students of early American cultural, social, and political history.”—Wendy Bellion, Documentary Editing
“This volume is not simply a good read or even an excellent book. It is an outstanding work, for it tells a human interest story set in a time that tends to be glossed over in American history.”—Ellis L. Yochelson, ISIS
“An invaluable reference source that will long be consulted by historians and other scholars.”—Virginia Quarterly Review
Publication Date: February 9, 2000
Publishing Partner: Published for the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
83 b/w + 13 color illus.
