Titian Peale

Titian Ramsay Peale.

Titian Ramsey Peale's painting 'Kilauea', 1842

Titian Ramsay Peale (born November 2, 1799; died March 13, 1885) was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Peale was first exposed to the study of natural history while assisting his father on his many excursions in search of specimens for the Peale Museum. The family moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where he began collecting and drawing insects and butterflies. Like his older brothers, Peale helped his father in the preservation of the museum's specimens for display, which included contributions from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. His drawings were published in Thomas Say's American Entomology as early as 1816, and he was soon after elected to the Academy of Natural Sciences. Peale took part in the 1817 expedition of the Academy of Natural Sciences to Florida and Georgia, together with Thomas Say, George Ord and William Maclure. He was assistant to Say on the expedition to the Rocky Mountains led by Stephen Harriman Long in 1819. The collection submitted to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia from this expedition included 122 drawings by Peale. He acquired a wild turkey for the museum's collections. Peale provided illustrations for Say's American Entomology (1824-28) and Charles Lucien Bonaparte's American Ornithology (1825-33). He also undertook a collecting expedition to Florida on behalf of Bonaparte. In 1831, Peale published a pamphlet known as Circular of the Philadelphia Museum: Containing Direction for the preservation and preparation of objects of natural history. The Peale museum continued to gain a worldwide reputation. He developed an effective method for storing butterflies in sealed cases with glass fronts and backs. As a result, parts of his collection have been preserved until the present day. His meticulous collection of over 100 separate butterfly species was often praised for the brilliance and vibrancy of the insects' colors. In 1838, two years after Charles Darwin had returned from his voyage on the Beagle, Peale took leave from his work at the museum to sail aboard the Peacock as chief naturalist for the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 led by Lt. Charles Wilkes. As chief naturalist, he collected and preserved various specimens of natural history, many of which he packed and shipped back to the museum. Peale's post-expedition report, Mammalia and Ornithology (1848), was suppressed due to objections by Wilkes and John Cassin. Cassin was hired to produce a corrected volume, which was published in 1858. During the expedition, Wilkes named Peale Passage after Titian Peale.^[1] On May 1, 1843, financial pressures forced Peale to sell the bankrupt museum at a sheriff's sale to Isaac Brown Parker. Then Peale went on to work for the U.S. Patent Office and to become a pioneer American photographer. Peale's work on insects, The Butterflies of North America, was never published, although the manuscript still resides at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth, Texas), the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, Nebraska), the Museum of Nebraska Art (University of Nebraska), the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Reading Public Museum (Reading, Pennsylvania), the Westmoreland Museum of American Art (Greensburg, Pennsylvania) and Yale University Art Gallery are among the public collections holding works by Titian Peale. Peale's Butterfly and Moth collection is held at the Academy of Natural Sciences with some additional specimens at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Books and Publications

• Poesch, Jessie Peale (1961). Titian Ramsay Peale And His Journals of The Wilkes Expedition, 1799-1885. American Philosophical Society. 
• Sellers, Charles Coleman (1980). Mr. Peale's Museum. W. W. Norton & Company. 

References

External links

• The Historic Titian Peale Butterfly and Moth Collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences
• Exhibit at the Museum of the American Philosophical Society featuring T. R. Peale's voyage with the US Exploring Expedition
• Collection of Titian Ramsay Peale sketches at the American Philosophical Society Library.