CHARLES WILLSON PEALE

Charles Willson Peale was the leading portrait painter in America for many years. He taught painting to several generations of his family and, in 1795, helped to establish a small art school in Philadelphia. The development of a science museum absorbed his middle years, but later in life he returned to painting. At age eighty-one he produced this affectionate portrait of his brother, James, showing the retired miniaturist gazing fondly at a portrait miniature of Rembrandt Peale’s oldest daughter, Rosalba, painted by Charles's daughter, Anna. The portrait miniature, “a picture within a picture,” is also in the DIA collection (acc. no. 53.345).