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.
Charles Willson Peale (1741—1827)
Oil on canvas; 91.4 x 71.1 x 2.5cm (36 x 28 x 1 in). National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian), Washington, DC.
Oil on canvas; 49 7/8 x 39 3/4 in. (126.4 x 101 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Oil on canvas. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, Philadelphia, PA.
Oil on canvas. Independence National Historical Park, Portrait Collection (Second Bank of the United States), Philadelphia, PA.
Oil on canvas; height: 124.46 cm (49 in), width: 99.06 cm (39 in). Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Oil on canvas. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.
Oil on canvas; 50 x 40-1/2 in. Private collection.
Oil on canvas; 36 13/16 x 32 1/16 inches (93.5 x 81.4 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA.
Oil on canvas; 86 1/2" x 56 3/4". Maryland State Art Collection, Annapolis, MD.
Oil on canvas. Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA.