The Painter's Chair (10 page)
Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
This busy painting became Peale’s first major work. He portrayed the English lord (by 1768 Pitt had entered the House of Lords
as the Earl of Chatham) in what he called a “Consular Habit.” Despite being very much a man of the Enlightenment, the declaiming
and gesturing Pitt appears without his wig, bare at the knees and neck, his attire a red Roman toga, pale yellow tunic, and
sandals. Such raiment was a convention of history painting, serving to associate contemporary figures with the heroes of antiquity.
During his time in London, Peale also worked at mastering a variety of other artistic skills, including the making of prints,
and he produced a mezzotint based on his Pitt portrait (he sent one impression to Copley, who admired it and thanked Peale
copiously). When back in America, Peale would sell them for years afterward, making a modest profit.
Despite his studies with West, their growing friendship, and the opportunity to explore the great city of London, Peale still
thought of himself “as an exile from his friends.”
20
Longing for his wife, he departed for home after two years and one month in England. An added stipend of £30 from his Mary
land benefactors helped underwrite the purchase of art supplies in London. Among them were “Picture frames,” fine brushes
called “pencils,” a palette and palette knives, “canvis,” a miniature paint box and palette, prints, books, and “Fraim and
Glass.” He bought pigments, too, including carmine (“vivid red Lake”), “ullemarine” (ultramarine), “Prussian Blue,” and “Peach
Black.” Even if he couldn’t spell, he had come to recognize what painting materials he needed and desired.
He had acquired advanced technical knowledge, too, of grinding pigments and the use of a thin layer of transparent paint (glaze)
to add shadows to flesh tints. He learned how to add luminosity to reds by painting them over whites, and how to use a heavy
layering of paint (impasto), often applied with a palette knife, to add emphasis and richness to his linear style, which tended
to rely upon draftsmanship. He returned to America with training beyond that of anyone in the colonies.
When he sailed for home in March, Peale’s baggage included two important gifts from Benjamin West. One was a canvas West had
painted of his student. His second gift was an unusual armchair, large and square in form. Beneath the seat was a pivot that
fastened to a platform, which elevated the whole some eighteen inches above the floor. The mechanism allowed the occupant
to rotate in place without shifting position. It was purpose-made for use in a portraitist’s studio, enabling the painter
to adjust his subject’s relationship to daylight without shifting drapery or costume.
21
This was, of course, a Painter’s Chair. After returning from England in 1769, Peale worked to clear his Mary land debts, painting
more than 150 portraits in the next six years of Virginians, Mary landers, and other gentlemen and ladies. He established
his reputation as the foremost portraitist in the mid-Atlantic region, and after Copley embarked for England in 1774, Peale
was left with no serious rival anywhere in America. By then, more than a few members of the emerging revolutionary generation
had already taken a seat in his Painter’s Chair.
III.
Winter 1776–1777 . . . Crossing the Delaware . . . Pennsylvania and New Jersey
THE POPULAR PORTRAITIST is fated to be forever in search of new customers. By 1776, Charles Willson Peale had long since fulfilled
the needs of his original Annapolis patrons. His ongoing search for clients had already taken him on several occasions to
Philadelphia, where he found many new sitters; as a result he had resolved in early 1776 to relocate to America’s most prosperous
metropolis to service them. The Hancock commission to paint General and Mrs. Washington that spring served to affirm the wisdom
of his decision, so work on their portraits had been regularly postponed by his journeys back and forth to Maryland to orga
nize the move of his family and business to Philadelphia.
On June 19, 1776, the Peale entourage finally arrived in Pennsylvania’s capital. The painter counted among his ten dependents
his wife, Rachel; a baby daughter (Angelica); a two-year-old son (Raphaelle; their first son had died while Peale was in England);
a motherless nephew and niece; and other extended family, including Charles Willson’s mother. The move brought them to the
city in time for him to record a momentous event in his diary on July 2. “This day the Continental Congress declared the United
Colonies Free and Independent States.”
22
The news was supposed to have been subject to a “bar of secrecy,” but within hours the vote had become the talk of Philadelphia’s
coffeehouses. A strong supporter of the Patriot cause, Peale joined the ranks of the military early the following month over
the strenuous objections of his mother. Brother James was already a member of a Mary land battalion, but now, as a Pennsylvanian,
Peale chose to join the Philadelphia Associators. The city militia was run democratically, and Peale, though a relative stranger,
proved a popular and resourceful leader. By November he was elected a first lieutenant.
The fortunes of the Continental Army had plummeted following the British evacuation of Boston. After posing for Peale, Washington
rejoined his troops in New York in June 1776, and his ragtag band of volunteers had proved no match for the most sophisticated
military force in the world. The Americans had been outflanked on Long Island in August, outgunned in Manhattan in September,
and overmatched in almost every way since. As winter approached, the Continental Army was in full retreat across New Jersey,
and Washington sought to save what remained of a force reduced by casualties, desertion, sickness, and the expiration of enlistments.
The Associators received their marching orders in early December 1776 to join the retreating army in New Jersey, but within
hours of arriving in “Trent-Town” (as Peale labeled Trenton in his diary), the Philadelphians were retreating, too, heading
back across the Delaware River. Peale described a “hellish scene,” with bonfires on both shores illuminating a nighttime crossing,
as boats returned again and again to New Jersey, ferrying men, horses, and artillery to the hoped-for safety of Pennsylvania.
23
The Associators could only watch as their battle-weary brethren shuffled past. The Philadelphians were simply dressed (established
decades earlier by Benjamin Franklin, the Associators had agreed that their uniforms, in order to minimize class distinctions,
would cost no more than ten shillings). But their plain brown and gray woolens seemed like luxury itself in comparison to
what the retreating soldiers wore. Peale noticed in particular one man who “had lost all his cloaths. He was in an Old dirty
Blanket Jacket, his beard long, and his face so full of Sores, that he could not clean it.”
24
The man, who had once been dressed in the finery of a silk-stocking Annapolis regiment, was in rags. Charles Will-son did
a double-take: He recognized the haunted and hungry face of his brother James.
As the men reached Pennsylvania, Washington redeployed his troops along the west bank of the Delaware. He placed them at strategic
points where the British might attempt to cross, but in the days before Christmas Washington also found himself pondering
the where and when of the forthcoming winter encampment. War was a warm-weather affair, he knew, but he wrestled with black
thoughts of a long winter spent contemplating the disastrous results of the preceding months. While Lieutenant Peale, his
portable paint box on his lap, painted a miniature of his commanding officer, Captain Lawrence Birnie, Washington and his
generals conceived the bold stroke that would carry them back across the Delaware after darkness fell on Christmas night 1776.
Very much later, a German immigrant named Emanuel Leutze would make an enormous painting,
George Washington Crossing the Delaware
, which captured something of the spirit of that long night. Despite its inaccuracies, it would become a part of American
mythology. But that’s another story entirely.
25
The surprise attack on Trenton on the morning of December 26 succeeded brilliantly. In the face of a violent nor’easter that
dumped rain, hail, and snow upon them, Washington and some twenty-four hundred Continentals accomplished the heroic nighttime
crossing of a river nearly choked with ice. Having then marched more than ten miles to Trenton, the Americans routed the Hessian
mercenaries holding the town, taking some nine hundred of them prisoner. But the victory was far from complete. Only half
of Washington’s forces had been able to cross the river, because an ice jam downstream had prevented eight hundred members
of the Pennsylvania militia from crossing to Trenton, while violent currents kept Peale and twelve hundred of his fellow Associators
along with six hundred New England Continentals on the Pennsylvania shore still farther south. Recognizing how exposed his
position was, Washington ordered the troops accompanying him to retreat once more across the Delaware, along with the Hessian
prisoners.
Safely back in Pennsylvania, he convened a council of war to decide “what future operations may be necessary.”
26
As his military advisers assembled, a messenger arrived. The letter from General John Cadwalader, commanding officer of the
Philadelphia Associators, advised Washington that Cadwalader and his men had successfully crossed the river—but had done so
a day late. Peale and his fellows were, in short, marching around New Jersey, virtually surrounded by a vastly larger enemy
force.
Washington and his counselors decided to seize the opportunity to make one last military strike before retiring for the winter.
Yet again, the Continentals would cross the river, this time to Princeton, and attempt to retake south Jersey. For one of
the few times in the war, Washington committed his entire army to the effort, and Peale was there to witness the events, leading
his men into battle since Captain Birnie’s various injuries had led to Peale’s taking charge of his platoon.
Peale—in a literary voice as colloquial and unpretentious as the man himself—recorded the events in plain language in his
diary:
At One oclock this morning [January 2, 1777] began a march for Trent Town. The Roads are very muddy, almost over our Shoe
Tops . . . a very tedious march. The Sun had Risen more than an hour before we Reached the Town [but] . . . at last we were
provided and had made a fire. I took a short nap on a plank with my feet to the fire. I was suddenly awakened by a Call to
Arms, that the Enemy was advancing, and at small distance from the Town . . .
We now was ordered to take our arms. The Sun appeared to be hardly 1.2 hour high. We then marched in Platoons back towards
the Town [and] . . . Platoon firing was now perty frequent. When we had almost got out of the Woods . . . word was brought
that the Enemy gave way, which at different times was the case. However, they had no[w] got possession of the greatest part
of the Town. A very [heavy] firing was kept up on the Bridge, and great numbers of the Enemy fell there. Some of our Artilery
stood their ground till the Enemy advanced within 40 Yds. And they was very near loosing the Field Piece . . . I really expected
a retreat.
At one oclock [the next] morning we began to move . . . By this I expected we were going to surround the Enemy, but after
marching some miles . . . the Sun had just risen just before we See Prinstown. We proceeded as fast as possible and was within
a mile of the Town when we were informed that all was quiet. A short time after, the Battn. just ahead of us began a Exceeding
quick Platoon firing and some Cannon . . . I carried my Platoon to the Top of the Hill & fired, tho’ very unwillingly, for
I thought the Enemy rather too far off, and then retreated, Loading . . . The 3rd time up, the Enemy began to Retreat. I must
here give the New England Troops their due. They were the first who regularly formed . . . and stood the fire without regarding
[the] Balls which whistled their thousand different notes around our heads, and what is very astonishing did little or no
harm . . .
We now advanced towards the Town, & halted at about 1.4 of a mile distance till the Artilery came up and our men were collected
in better order. Amediately on the Artilery firing, a Number [of the enemy] that had formed near the College began to disperse,
and amediately a Flag was sent, and we huzared Victory.
27
Peale claimed no great glory for himself, then or later, as he recollected his war experiences in his
Autobiography.
In retrospect, he described himself as “totally unfit to endure the fatigues of long marches,” before offering an aside that
aptly sketched his character, humbly referring to himself, as he did throughout his
Autobiography
, in the third person. “Yet by temperament and by a forethought of providing for the worst that might happen, he endured this
campaign better than many others whose appearance was more robust. He always carried a piece of dryed Beef and Bisquits in
his Pocket, and Water in his Canteen, which, he found, was much better than Rum.”
28
Temperate and sensible, a man of modest expectations, Peale survived the Battle of Princeton. His memories would later serve
him well on canvas as well as on the printed page.
I V.
January and February 1779 . . . Mr. Peale’s Painting Room . . . Philadelphia
THE TIME FOR another painting had come. Washington’s success at Princeton had been galvanizing, but it had been followed by
two years of military ups and downs. The Americans had lost the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, allowing the British
to occupy Philadelphia; balancing that disappointment, the Continental Army had defeated the enemy at the Battle of Saratoga
in October. A brutal winter followed for Washington’s troops at Valley Forge, but spirits lifted when later in 1778 the news
arrived that the French had joined the war against Britain. Philadelphia was once more in American hands—that summer the British
had shifted their base of operations to New York City—and optimism was rising on the American side.