The Artist in His Museum, 1822

The Artist in His Museum, 1822
by
Charles Willson Peale (1741—1827)

Oil on canvas; 103 3/4 x 79 7/8 in. (263.5 x 202.9 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

In a long day-lit room in the Philadelphia State House (now Independence Hall), Peale designed his Philadelphia Museum with a grid system of cabinet dioramas and cases for his wildlife specimens; above them he installed his Gallery of Famous Men.

With a theatrical gesture, Peale presents himself as a storyteller, carnival barker, master of ceremonies, salesman, and modern-day Noah gathering natural resources. He is shown creating order, and ultimately, providing salvation through the rational display of educational artifacts.

The Federalists of the 1780s had a glimpse of what America was to become — a scrambling business society dominated by the pecuniary interests of ordinary people — and they did not like what they saw. This premonition of America’s future lay behind their sense of crisis and their horrified hyperbolic rhetoric. The wholesale pursuits of private interest and private luxury were, they thought, undermining America’s capacity for republican government. They designed the Constitution in order to save American republicanism from the deadly effects of the private pursuits of happiness.

— Gordon S. Wood
The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (2011)