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Charles Willson Peale
(American, 1741–1827)
The Reverend Joseph Pilmore, 1787
Mezzotint engraving on paper, 7 1 /2 x 6 1 /4 inches (oval)
Letterpress (around oval border): “The Reverend JOSEPH PILMORE
Rector Of The United CHURCHES OF TRINITY, ST. THOMAS And
ALL-SAINTS./painted and Engraved by C. W. Peale 1787.”
Provenance: See plate 3.
References: 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. 692; Robert Devlin Schwarz, A Gallery
Collects Peales, Philadelphia Collection XXXV (Philadelphia: Schwarz Gallery, 1987),
no. 8; 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
Several years of postwar depression followed the end of the Revolutionary War. Although Charles Willson Peale was a
popular artist during that time, portrait commissions could not support his family and their house at Third and Lombard
streets, which he had purchased in 1780. In London, artists had enjoyed great success with engravings after their paintings.
Peale decided that this could be a profitable endeavor for him, and so in 1787 he began to publish a series of mezzotint
portraits. The first three engravings—of Franklin, Lafayette, and Washington—were followed by this print of Joseph
Pilmore. The Pilmore portrait was not part of the original series, but after its advertisement in the Pennsylvania Packet (May
18 and July 2, 1787), it became Peale’s most popular print. Although the artist had anticipated a series of a dozen engravings
of famous Americans, he published only the first three and this portrait of Pilmore. The difficult process of producing and
marketing the engravings without the services of the printmakers and printsellers available to artists in the London market
limited the profitability of this “pioneer effort to establish printmaking in Philadelphia.” 1 This is one of six impressions of
the Pilmore mezzotint known. 2
Notes
1. Edgar P. Richardson, “Charles Willson Peale’s Engravings in the Year of the National Crisis,” in Charles Willson Peale and His World by Edgar P.
Richardson et al. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1973), p. 181. 2. 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.