Rembrandt Peale 1778 - 1860

Rosalba Peale Underwood (the artist's daughter)
Grafton B. Wirgman, East Orange, New Jersey (by descent from the above)
Carol Wirgman, East Orange, New Jersey (great-great granddaughter of the artist, by descent from the above)
James Graham & Sons, New York
Estate of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, Madison, New Jersey (sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, October 31, 1975, lot 12, illustrated)
Henry McNeil, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (acquired at the above sale)
A Philadelphia Estate (sold: Christie's, New York, November 30, 1999, lot 6, illlustrated)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

(possibly) New York, National Academy of Design, 1846, no. 12
New York, James Graham & Sons, Paintings by Members of the Peale Family, November-December 1941

As a son of the eminent painter and Renaissance man Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale was raised steeped in a wide variety of disciplines, including the arts, scientific invention and natural history. He is frequently cited as the most celebrated and popular member of the second generation of Peales and, like his father, devoted himself to a career in portraiture. Painted in 1846, the present Self-Portrait is one of at least eight the artist executed over his lifetime.  In fact, his first oil painting was a self-portrait, completed when he was thirteen years old, followed a few years later by a second self-portrait set by candlelight in which Peale began to experiment with complex light effects in painting.  Peale said of his earliest work, "My first attempt to paint in oil was, as usual, a portrait of myself, in which I could blunder unseen, and not fatigue the sitter sooner than the painter.  This I thought a good beginning as everybody knew the likeness of the little boy only thirteen years old.  I have often shown this portrait to young beginners, to encourage them to go on from 'bad' to better" (Rembrandt Peale 1778-1860: A Life in the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1985, p. 30).

While most of Peale's self-portraits are rectangular, in the present painting the artist employs the oval format he used for his famous Patriae Pater portraits of George Washington. Carol Hevner [Soltis] writes, "In 1823, highly motivated to produce an important exhibition piece that would secure him artistic recognition and financial gain, he created what he would henceforth refer to as 'The Standard National Likeness,' his Patriae Pater. 'Never was a portrait painted under any circumstances in which the whole soul of the Artist was more engaged than mine is in this of Washington,' he wrote in 1824.

"In seeking to create the definitive portrait of Washington, Rembrandt chose to frame the figure in an ornate stonework oval, a reflection of the oval format utilized in the museum portraits, which were themselves referential to the ancient clypeus format employed repeatedly in European and American prints to celebrate men of note and honor" (Lillian B. Miller, In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778-1860, Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 279).