Rubens Peale
| Rubens Peale | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Rubens Peale, by Rembrandt Peale, 1807
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| Born |
May 4, 1784 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | July 17, 1865 (aged 81) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania |
| Known for | Landscape; Museum director |
| Notable work | The Cannon of Hydro |
| Spouse(s) | Eliza Burd Patterson |
Rubens Peale (May 4, 1784 – July 17, 1865) was an American artist and museum director. Born in Philadelphia, he was a son of artist-naturalist, Charles Willson Peale, and brother of artist-naturalist Titian Peale.
He was the fourth son of Charles Willson Peale. Rubens had weak eyes and, unlike most of his siblings, did not set out to be an artist. He traveled with the family in 1802 to the United Kingdom, but was unable to travel on the continent with the resumption of war after the Peace of Amiens. In 1803 he attended classes at the University of Pennsylvania. He became Director of his father's museum in Philadelphia from 1810 to 1821, and then of the Peale Museum in Baltimore, which he ran with his brother, Rembrandt Peale. To promote the museum, he installed gas lighting illumination in the museum.
Peale opened his own museum in New York on October 26, 1825. By 1840, Peale would change the name to the New York Museum of Natural History and Science. The Panic of 1837 sent his museum into debt. It competed with the American Museum, of P.T. Barnum. Rubens had to sell his entire collection to Barnum in 1843. He moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In 1837, he retired to his father-in-law, George Patterson's estate near Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, and lived as a country gentleman, at Woodland Farm. He experimented with mesmerism, and wrote to his brother Rembrandt about it.
In October 1855, he began keeping a journal, and he turned to still life painting, as an extension of his interest in natural history. In 1864, he returned to Philadelphia, and studied landscape painting with Edward Moran. In the last ten years of his life, he produced 130 paintings.
April 15, 1865:
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