The Exhumation of the Mastodon, 1806—08

The Exhumation of the Mastodon, 1806—08
by
Charles Willson Peale (1741—1827)

Oil on canvas, 49 x 61½ inches. Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD.

Peale and his family are represented to the right of the water wheel. Although his son Rembrandt was the only member of the family actually involved in the exhumation, Peale inserted numerous family members in the painting, including

two wives, nine children, a daughter-in-law and son-in-law, his brother James, and his second wife’s sister and her husband. [from The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1780—1870; edited by Lillian B. Miller, 1996]

The successful exhumation of the mastodon bones were exhibited in Peale’s Museum.

The most exciting scientific find of the period was Charles Willson Peale’s exhumation in 1801 near Newburgh, New York, of the bones of the mastodon, or mammoth. Peale displayed his mammoth in his celebrated museum and in 1806 painted a marvelous picture of what was perhaps the first organized exhumation in American history. Peale’s discovery electrified the country and put the word mammoth on everybody’s lips. A Philadelphia baker advertised the sale of mammoth bread. In Washington a mammoth eater ate forty-two eggs in ten minutes. And under the leadership of the Baptist preacher John Leland, the ladies of Cheshire, Massachusetts, late in 1801 sent to President Jefferson a mammoth cheese, six feet in diameter and nearly two feet thick and weighing 1,230 pounds.

— Gordon S. Wood
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)