Sarah Miriam Peale was an American portrait painter, considered the first American woman to succeed as a professional artist. One of a family of artists of whom her uncle Charles Willson Peale was the most illustrious, Sarah Peale painted portraits mainly of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. notables, politicians, and military figures. Lafayette sat for her four times.
Life
Sarah was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest daughter of the miniaturist and still-life painter James Peale, younger brother of Charles Willson Peale. Her mother was Miriam Claypoole. Her father and her uncle trained her as an artist, and she served as her father's studio assistant. During her time as a studio assistant, she gained experience in mixing paints, preparing canvases, and delineating backgrounds. Sarah and her sisters, Anna Claypoole and Margaretta, were different from the middle-class women of the time, as they experienced schooling, how to be a wife and mother, as well as developed entrepreneurial skills from their family such as art. As a young girl, she gained experience doing the finishing touches on her father's paintings. Her first public works date from 1816 with subjects such as flowers and still-life, but soon turned to portraiture. In 1818, she spent three months with Rembrandt Peale, her cousin, in Baltimore, and again in 1820 and 1822. He influenced her early painting style and subject matter. For 25 years, she painted in Baltimore and, intermittently, in Washington, D.C. She attended sessions of Congress, and painted portraits of many public figures. She was accepted to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1824 along with her sister Anna Claypoole Peale, the first women to achieve this distinction. She opened a studio in Baltimore in 1831. Over 100 commissioned portrait paintings are known from her time in Baltimore. She was known the most prolific artist in the city during that era. Her oil portraits were quickly sought after by congressmen, diplomats, and other wealthy individuals in the Maryland area. Her portrait work is regarded as stylistically unique due to her usage of detailed furs, lace, and fabrics as well as realistic faces, skin, and hair. In 1847, ill health caused her to relocate to St. Louis where she became independently successful, one of America's first professional female artists able to earn her living through her work. Most of her work from this era is in private hands. Around 1860, she shifted her subjects from portraits back to still-life, but with a natural arrangement rather that the formal ones of her earlier years. She returned to her hometown in 1878, living out her last years there with her sisters Anna Claypoole and Margaretta Angelica. Like her sisters, she never married. She died in 1885, aged 85. She is buried at the Gloria Dei Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia. Several paintings by Peale were included in the inaugural exhibition of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, American Women Artists 1830-1930, in 1987.
