The Peale Family, 1773—1809

Oil on canvas; 56 1/2 x 89 1/2 in. (143.5 x 227.3 cm). New-York Historical Society, New York, NY.

Begun in 1773 at the start of Peale’s career as an artist, he stopped working on it for some 25 years, then dusted it off in 1808 to finish it.

The artist appears at left, holding his palette and supervising the drawing made by his brothers St. George and James (sitting). Seated in the middle of the scene is Rachel Brewer Peale, the artist's first wife, and their daughter Margaret. To the right sit the artist's mother, Margaret, his sister Elizabeth, and his daughter Eleanor. Standing behind the table are the artist's sister Margaret Jane and the Peales’ family nurse, Peggy Durgan. The artist's dog Argus sits in front of the table.

The three portrait busts depict Peale's teacher, Benjamin West, Peale, and one of Peale's earliest patrons, the Virginia-born lawyer Edmund Jennings.

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)