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Charles Willson Peale: Artist and Patriot
Charles Willson Peale Artist and Patriot Author:Berta N. Briggs In any other age, Charles Willson Peale would have become legendary, for besides being an artist of superb gifts, the "Portraitist of the American Revolution" was preeminent as a naturalist, curator, soldier, farmer, educator, politician, and inventor. He fathered fifteen children, and his life of gusto ended only at eighty-five when he contrac... more »ted a fatal cold while out seeking his fourth wife.
While Peale is best known as a painter, it is the other facets of his life that make this chronicle especially fascinating. Here is a man who, among other things, experimented with air conditioning and moving pictures; dug up and assembled the first prehistoric mammal skeleton in America; developed, with Jefferson, a patented polygraph for copying documents; built in Philadelphia one of the finest natural history museums in the world; and helped soothe the dangerous postwar mobs of the city who threatened to take over Pennsylvania politics. Running through this saga is the lively story, both comic and tragic, of his life with his family. His outlandish system of naming his children as well as his advanced ideas for bringing them up are entertainingly described.
Illustrated with halftones of ten of Peale's paintings.« less