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Charles Willson Peale
(American, 1741–1827)
The Reverend Joseph Pilmore (1739–1825), 1787
Oil on canvas, 23 x 18 3 /4 inches
Provenance: Joseph Pilmore; his second wife (who was the widow of Bishop
William White); the Poulson family (relatives of the Whites); Mrs. Susan Poulson;
Dr. Wilson Poulson, Linwood (on the Delaware River near Chester, Pennsylvania);
Gurney Poulson Sloan, Dunedin, Florida; Schwarz Gallery by 1987; Pennsylvania
private collection until 2003
Exhibited: Kennedy Galleries, New York, American Masters, 18th and 19th
Centuries (Mar. 14–Apr. 7, 1973), repro. in cat., pl. 5
References: Charles Coleman Sellers, “Charles Willson Peale with Patron and
Populace: A Supplement to Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” in
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 59, pt. 3 (Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society, May 1969), p. 76 (repro. p. 126); Charles Coleman
Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” in Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, vol. 42, pt. 1 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1952), no. 169 (as unlocated); Robert Devlin Schwarz, A Gallery Collects
Peales, Philadelphia Collection XXXV (Philadelphia: Schwarz Gallery, 1987), no. 7
(repro. in color); Wendy J. Shadwell, “The Portrait Prints of Charles Willson Peale,”
in Eighteenth-Century Prints in Colonial America, ed. Joan D. Dolmetsch
(Williamsburg, Va.: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1979), pp. 134–40
Charles Willson Peale has been the subject of numerous books, articles, and exhibitions. His life and his multiple careers as
a painter, a patriot, a museum founder, an inventor, a farmer, and a naturalist have been detailed by many scholars including
Charles Coleman Sellers, Edgar P. Richardson, Brooke Hindle, and Lillian B. Miller.
Charles Willson Peale was born in Maryland in 1741 and apprenticed to a saddler by 1754. After his release from this
apprenticeship, he set up a shop in Annapolis. In 1762 he married Rachel Brewer, the first of his three wives. At about this time
he developed an interest in painting and studied for a short time with John Hesselius in Maryland and then in Boston with
John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). In 1766, eleven prominent Marylanders subscribed to a fund that permitted Peale to
study with Benjamin West in London, where he remained for a little less than three years. He returned to Maryland in 1769
and painted there, in Philadelphia, and in Virginia. He first painted George Washington in 1772.
In 1776 Peale settled in Philadelphia, where he became active in politics and enrolled in the city militia. During the
Revolutionary War he served in the Continental Army, seeing action at Princeton and arduous winter encampment at Valley
Forge. After the war he continued to paint portraits of Washington and other heroes of the Revolution. By 1782 he had
opened a portrait gallery in his Philadelphia studio, and by 1786 he had founded his Philadelphia Museum for the display