Charles Willson Peale : art and selfhood in the early republic / David C. Ward.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ward, David C., 1952-

Contributor:

Peale, Charles Willson, 1741-1827.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peale, Charles Willson, 1741-1827.

Peale, Charles Willson.

Painters--United States--Biography.

Painters.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 236 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2004]

Summary:

Son of a Convicted Felon Whose Early death left the family impoverished, Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) went on to lead a staggeringly full and successful life. A portrait painter who produced an unparalleled body of work, including the iconic Artist in His Museum, Peale was also a revolutionary soldier, a radical activist, an impresario of moving pictures, a natural historian, an inventor, and the proprietor of one of the first modern museums. His many other interests included a lifelong preoccupation with writing; in fact, his autobiography is one of the first examples of the genre in the United States. David C. Ward's engaging and erudite book, richly textured with references to the history and culture of the time, is the first full critical biography of Peale. It links the artist's autobiography to his painting, illuminating the man, his art, and his times. Peale emerges for the first time as a figure who embodied that particularly American phenomenon: the self-made man. Recounting many fascinating stories and incidents, Ward takes a new look at Peale's complex family life, his artistic career, and his multifaceted cultural ambitions. Before Peale, life histories had been written mainly as religious and confessional documents. Peale, however, produced his secular work to describe not how God made him, but how he worked to make himself. This compelling study, drawing extensively from Peale's extraordinary autobiography, shows how Peale's life itself documents the development of American independence and individualism. Ultimately Ward addresses Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's great question, "What then is the American, this new man?" as he sheds light on one of these new men and on the formative years in which he lived.

Contents:

Preface: Charles Willson Peale: This New Man xvii

Part I "[W]hy not Act the Man[?]"

1 Forging: Charles Willson Peale and His Father 3

2 "This Faint Spark of Genius": Fortune, Patronage, and Peale's Rise as an Artist 23

3 "Application Will Overcome the Greatest Difficulties": Work, Career, and Identity in Peale's Art and Life 44

Part II "I Scru[t]inize the Actions of Men"

4 A Good War and a Troubled Peace: Charles Willson Peale's Search for Order, 1776-94 71

5 "The Medicinal Office of the Mind": The Peale Museum's Mission of Reform, 1793-1810 95

6 "The Hygiene of the Self": Work, Writing, and the Englightened Body 111

Part III "It Would Seem a Second Creation"

7 The Struggle against Dispersal: Work, Family, and Order in Peale's Family Portraits 135

8 "I Bring Forth into Public View": Peale's Secular Apotheosis in The Artist in His Museum 155.

Notes:

"Ahmanson Murphy fine arts imprint"--Half t.p.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0520239601

OCLC:

53254013