Titian Ramsay Peale (November 17, 1799 – March 13, 1885) was an American artist, naturalist, and explorer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1] He was a scientific illustrator whose paintings and drawings of wildlife are known for their beauty and accuracy.[2][3]
Starting around 1855, Peale became an enthusiastic amateur photographer. Many of his photographs featured buildings and landscapes in and around Washington D.C. He joined a local club with other amateur photographers and participated in field trips, photo exchanges and contests. By the end of the Civil War, his interest in photography waned and he only occasionally took pictures.[6]
Biography
Family and early life
Peale was born in Philosophical Hall, Philadelphia, on November 17, 1799.[3] The youngest son of the polymathCharles Willson Peale and his wife Elizabeth de Peyster, Peale was named after his dead half-brother, also named Titian Ramsay Peale (1780–1798).[7] The family moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where Peale began collecting and drawing butterflies and other insects. Some of his drawings were published in Thomas Say's American Entomology as early as 1816, but most remained unpublished until recently.[8] Like his older brothers Raphaelle, Rembrandt, and Rubens Peale, Titian helped his father in the preservation of the museum's specimens for display.
In 1819–20, he and Say joined a government-led expedition to the Rocky Mountains led by Stephen Harriman Long, during which Peale made a large collection of drawings of natural objects and scenery.[11][12]
In the winter of 1824–25, Peale traveled to South Carolina and Florida to collect bird specimens for Charles Lucien Bonaparte's forthcoming quasi-continuation of Alexander Wilson's American Ornithology (1825–1833). In Florida, he boarded for a short time at the farm of Bonaparte's cousin, Achille Murat, and returned to Philadelphia in April 1825.[13]
In 1831–32, Peale explored the Magdalena River valley in northern Colombia. According to a notice published by Constantine S. Rafinesque in 1832: "Mr. Peale is just returned from his voyage to South America, and travels in 1831 up the R. Magdalena to Bogota. He has brought a fine zoological collection for the Philadelphia Museum, among which are 500 birds and 50 quadrupeds, which were not there. It is expected that he will publish an account of his zoological travels and discoveries. He asserts the very singular fact that the R. Magdalena has no shells and but few fishes."[14]
Around 1832 Peale was one of the first naturalists to question the veracity of John James Audubon's claim of discovering a new species of eagle.[15]
In 1848, he was removed from the payroll of the scientific corps.[1] In 1851, a fire at the Library of Congress destroyed nearly all of the 100 copies of Peale's expedition report, Mammalia and Ornithology (1848), and its publication was delayed. John Cassin was hired to produce a corrected volume, which was published in 1858.
Scientific collections
Peale was the second ornithologist known to collect a female golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera), and the first to illustrate it. Thomas Jefferson collected one in 1782.[21] Peale shot his specimen in 1824 near Camden, New Jersey, and his drawing was engraved by Alexander Lawson and published in Plate 1 of Bonaparte’s American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of Birds Inhabiting the United States, Not Given by Wilson, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, 1825).[22]
Peale developed an effective method for storing butterflies in sealed cases with glass fronts and backs, and parts of his collection of over 100 species still survive.[23]
He was the curator for the Peale's Museum and was a notable scientific illustrator of Central Plains flora and fauna for several decades. He also designed coins for the United States Mint.[24]
1 2 Porter, Charlotte M. (1985). "The Lifework of Titian Ramsay Peale". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 129 (3): 300–312. ISSN0003-049X. JSTOR987013.
1 2 Murphy, Robert Cushman (1957). "The Sketches of Titian Ramsay Peale (1799–1885)". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 101 (6): 523–531. ISSN0003-049X. JSTOR985520.
↑ Haifley, Julie Link (1980). "Capital Images: The Photography of Titian Ramsay Peale, 1855-1885". Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 50: 229–244. ISSN0897-9049. JSTOR40067819.
↑ Stroud, Patricia Tyson (2000). The Emperor of Nature: Charles-Lucien Bonaparte and His World. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN978-0812235463.
↑ Rafinesque, Constantine S., ed. (1832). "Scientific explorers in America and Africa". Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge. In Eight Numbers. Containing About 160 Original Articles and Tracts on Natural and Historical Sciences, the Description of About 150 New Plants, and 100 New Animals or Fossils. Many Vocabularies of Languages, Historical and Geological Facts, &c. 1: 26.
Sterling, Keir B., ed. (1997). "Peale, Titian Ramsay". Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists. Greenwood Press.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Titian Peale .
Capt. Abraham de Peyster (1753–1798), married Catherine Livingston, granddaughter of Philip Livingston
Frederick de Peyster (1758–1834)
James Ferguson de Peyster (1794–1874), married (1) Susan Maria Clarkson (1800–1823), daughter of Matthew Clarkson; married (2) Frances Goodhue Ashton (1805–1871)
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician, and naturalist.
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Peale may refer to:
The Artist in His Museum is an 1822 self-portrait by the American painter Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827). It depicts the 81-year-old artist posed in Peale's Museum, then occupying the second floor of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The nearly life-size painting is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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Charles Coleman Sellers was an American historian, biographer, and librarian who won the Bancroft Prize in 1970 for his biography of American painter Charles Willson Peale. Sellers was a long-time librarian at Dickinson College and also held positions at Wesleyan University and the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.
Moses Williams (1777–c.1825) was an African-American visual artist who was particularly well known as a maker of silhouettes. He was a former slave of the artist Charles Willson Peale.
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Rosalba Carriera Peale was an American portraitist, landscape painter, and lithographer. She was the eldest daughter of artist Rembrandt Peale and granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale.
Reuben Haines III was a Quaker farmer, brewer, abolitionist, scientist, ornithologist, meteorologist, firefighter, philanthropist, and educational reformer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Titian Ramsay Peale was an American ornithologist, entomologist, and artist who helped his father, the polymath Charles Willson Peale, assemble the first scientific collection of zoological specimens in the western hemisphere. Titian and his brother Rembrandt Peale were trained by their father in oil painting. When George Washington sat for his portrait, they set up their own easels next to their father's.
Samuel Seymour was a painter, engraver, and illustrator who documented Native American people and the scenery from expeditions of Stephen Harriman Long in 1819, 1820, and 1823. Some of the drawings captured new species of flora and fauna.
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