PEALE, CHARLES WILLSON American portrait painter, celebrated especially for his portraits of Wash ington, was born in Queen Anne's county (Md.), on April 15, 1741. During his infancy the family removed to Chestertown, Kent county (Md.), and after the death of his father (a country schoolmaster) in 1750 they removed to Annapolis. Here, at the age of 13, he was apprenticed to a saddler. About 1764 he began seriously to study art. He got some assistance from John Hes selius, native-born son of the Swedish painter Gustavus Hesselius, and from John Singleton Copley in Boston; and from 1767 to 1770 he studied under Benjamin West in London. In 1770 he opened a studio in Philadelphia, and met with immediate success. In 1772, at Mount Vernon, Peale painted a three-quarters-length study of Washington (the earliest known portrait, of him), in the uniform of a colonel of Virginia militia. This canvas is now in the Lee memorial chapel of Washington and Lee university. He painted various other portraits of Washington; probably the best known is a full-length, which was made in 1778, and of which Peale made many copies. This portrait had been ordered by the Continental Congress, which, however, made no appropriation for it, and eventually it was bought for a private collection in Phila delphia. Peale painted two miniatures of Mrs. Washington (1772 and 1777) and portraits of many of the famous men of the time, a number of which are in4ndependence hall, Philadelphia.
Peale removed to Philadelphia in 1777, and served as a member of the committee of public safety ; he aided in raising a militia company, became a lieutenant and afterwards a captain, and took part in the battles of Trenton, Princeton and Germantown. In 1779 and 1780 he was a member of the Pennsylvania assembly, where he voted for the abolition of slavery. He freed his own slaves whom he had brought from Maryland. In 1801 he under took, largely at his own expense, the excavation of the skeletons of two Mastodons in Ulster and Orange counties, N.Y., and in 1802 he established at Philadelphia Peale's museum. He was one of the founders, in 1805, of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia. At the age of 81 Peale painted a large can vas, "Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda," and at 83 a full-length portrait of himself, now in the Academy of the Fine Arts. He died in Philadelphia on Fzb. 22, 1827.
His brother, JAMES PEALE (1749-1831) , also an artist, painted two portraits of Washington (one now the property of the New York Historical Society, and the other in Independence hall, Phila delphia), besides landscapes and historical compositions.