Rembrandt Peale

On business in D.C., I decided to take advantage of my proximity to the National Portrait Gallery and see some portraits of the Americans we’ve been reading and writing about here at WWTFT.  Whenever you look at works of art surrounding this period, certain names crop up again and again.  One of these names is Rembrandt Peale.  Peale was introduced to George Washington by his father Charles Wilson Peale, also an artist of some renown.   In 1795, at the age of 17, he painted one of the most iconic portraits of Washington.  He was a prolific and talented painter who completed more than 600 paintings, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall, and John C. Calhoun.

None of these, however, prompted this post.  Peale’s painting of his sister left me transfixed.