Rembrandt Peale (1778 - 1860). Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style was influenced by French Neoclassicism after a stay in Paris in his early thirties. Rembrandt Peale was born the third of six surviving children to his mother, Rachel Brewer, and father, Charles Willson Peale in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1778. The father, Charles, also a notable artist, named him after the noted 17th-century Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. His father also taught all of his children, including Raphaelle Peale, Rubens Peale and Titian Peale, to paint scenery and portraiture, and tutored Rembrandt in the arts and sciences. Rembrandt began drawing at the age of 8. A year after his mother's death and the remarriage of his father, Peale left the school of the arts, and completed his first self-portrait at the age of 13. The canvas displays the young artist's early mastery. The clothes, however, give the notion that Peale exaggerated what a 13-year-old would look like, and Peale's hair curls like the hair of a Renaissance angel. Later in his life, Peale often showed this painting to young beginners, to encourage them to go from 'bad' to better. In July 1787, Charles Willson Peale introduced his son Rembrandt to George Washington, and the young aspirant artist watched his father paint the future president. In 1795, at the age of 17, Rembrandt painted an aging Washington, making him appear far more aged than in reality. The portrait was well received, and Rembrandt had made his debut. At the age of 20, Peale married 22-year-old Eleanor May Short at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Philadelphia. During their marriage, Peale and Short had nine children: Rosalba, Eleanor, Michael Angelo, Angelica, and Emma Clara among them. In 1840, he married Harriet Cany, one of his pupils and an artist in her own right. In 1822, Peale moved to New York City, where he embarked on an attempt to paint what he hoped would become the standard likeness of Washington. He studied portraits by other artists including John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and his own father, as well as his own 1795 picture which had never truly satisfied him. His resulting work Patriae Pater, completed in 1824, depicts Washington through an oval window, and is considered by many to be second only to Gilbert Stuart's iconic Athenaeum painting of the first president. Peale subsequently attempted to capitalize on the success of what quickly became known as his Porthole picture. Patriae Pater was purchased by Congress in 1832 for $2,000. It currently hangs in the Old Senate Chamber. In 1826 he helped found the National Academy of Design in New York City. Peale went on to create over 70 detailed replicas, including one of Washington in full military uniform that currently hangs in the Oval Office. Peale continued to paint other noted portraits, such as those of the third president Thomas Jefferson while he was in office, and later on a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall. Noted for his itinerant nature, Peale visited Europe several times to study art. Throughout his life, Peale traveled across the Western Hemisphere in search of inspiration and opportunities as an artist. His father helped pay his way to Paris, where he stayed from June to September 1808, and again from October 1809 to November 1810. In Paris, Peale studied the works of Jacques-Louis David, which influenced him to paint in the Neoclassical style. He painted the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt and several other noted patrons such as Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Francois Andre Michaux. After his successes in France, Peale returned to Philadelphia in 1810. His efforts to establish his knowledge and mastery of art were displayed in his painting The Roman Daughter. The painting was deemed too sensational by the people of Philadelphia, who were unsympathetic to his endeavors toward improving the state of fine arts in America in the 19th century. Amid the economic hardship of the War of 1812, President Jefferson, who promised to buy the 1795 portrait of Washington, but could not keep his promise, instead encouraged Peale to go to Europe, as we have genius among us but no unemployed wealth to reward it. Motivated by his father's establishment of the American Museum of Philadelphia and having been unsuccessful in Philadelphia, Rembrandt Peale assumed his father's role in another city.