Mrs. John O'Donnell (Sarah Chew Elliott)

This is an oil on canvas painting showing a woman in a white gown, embroidered in gold, trimmed with pearls, lace, pink silk and a pink silk sash, holding a miniature of a man in a jeweled frame with a black picot ribbon. The figure is seated and shown in three quarters length, the head almost full-faced, hair is natural graying blond. The nosegay of star-shaped flowers on her bodice may be a tremblant. The background has a curving high stone wall with two urns, green foliage of a tree above the wall and two small weeping willows by the water at the left end of wall.		Charles Willson Peale
American (1741-1827)
Mrs. John O'Donnell (Sarah Chew Elliott), 1787
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Frank Batten
American Art
Location:  Exhibit, Gallery 168
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Dimensions:  H: 36 1/8 in, W: 27 1/2 in
Object ID: 62.94.1

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This is an oil on canvas painting showing a woman in a white gown, embroidered in gold, trimmed with pearls, lace, pink silk and a pink silk sash, holding a miniature of a man in a jeweled frame with a black picot ribbon. The figure is seated and shown in three quarters length, the head almost full-faced, hair is natural graying blond. The nosegay of star-shaped flowers on her bodice may be a tremblant. The background has a curving high stone wall with two urns, green foliage of a tree above the wall and two small weeping willows by the water at the left end of wall.
Charles Willson Peale
Queen Anne's County, Md. 1741-1827 Philadelphia, Pa.
\par\pard\ql Mrs. Thomas Elliott (Mary Chew), 1787
Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 × 27 1/2 in. (91.8 × 69.9 cm)
Signed and dated left center: Peale Pinxit 1787

References: Charles Coleman Sellers, Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 73; Lillian B. Miller et al., eds., The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, New Haven, 2000, V, pp. 117-18, 120.

Mrs. John O'Donnell (Sarah Chew Elliott), 1787
Oil on canvas, 36 × 27 1/2 in. (91.4 × 69.9 cm)
Signed and dated lower right, with ligature: CWPeale
\tab\tab\tab\tab\tab pinx 1787

References: Charles Coleman Sellers, Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale, Philadelphia, 1952, no. 599; Ellen G. Miles, American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century, Washington, D.C., 1995, p. 134.

Mary O'Donnell, 1791
Oil on canvas, 26 1/4 × 20 7/8 in. (66.7 × 53 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Frank Batten, 63.112.1, 62.94.1, 61.91.1, respectively
References: Charles Coleman Sellers, Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale, Philadelphia, 1952, pp. 152-53; Lillian B. Miller et al., eds., The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family, New Haven, 2000, V, pp. 170-71.

Charles Willson Peale's portraits of three generations of the Elliott and O'Donnell families display gentle virtues appropriate to each stage of a woman's life in that era-a child's innocence, a young matron's beauty and devotion, and the mature piety of a grandmother. They also celebrate an illustrious Baltimore family who enjoyed great wealth, another virtue that citizens of the new republic embraced without apology.
Peale is a monumental figure in the history of American art. While lacking the brilliant virtuosity of John Singleton Copley or the learned sophistication of Benjamin West, his paintings have a charm and directness expressive of a young society that was both idealistic and pragmatic. A tireless patriot, scientist, and patriarch, Peale is significant not only because of his own paintings, which include the first official portrait of General George Washington, but also for his creation of museums of art and natural history. He fathered a dynasty of American painters, teaching his brother, sons, daughters, and nephew to paint, as well as putting them to work in his museums in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. Two of his children, Raphaelle and Rembrandt Peale (see object 71.687), made particularly significant contributions of their own.
Born in Maryland, Peale began by studying the work of John Hesselius, an itinerant painter, and Copley in Boston (see object 80.219). He spent 1767 to 1769 in London with West (see object 71.720), learning English painting theory (especially as taught by Hogarth) and the techniques of high-style portraiture. Unlike West and Copley, Peale returned to the colonies and fought in the War of Independence.
After the war, Peale established his Gallery of Great Men, featuring what he called "worthies of the Revolution." The artist aimed to demonstrate the moral and intellectual qualities required by the citizens of a republic, and for that purpose the trappings of English portraiture were not appropriate. When he received private commissions, however, Peale was able to give his London training full rein. The elegant two- and three-figure family portraits he produced in the late 1780s are among his most admired works.
In 1787, Peale asked Captain Thomas Elliott, a merchant in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore, to help him secure patrons in that city; soon after, he painted portraits of Elliott's wife and daughter. A rich array of objects reveals Mrs. Elliott's personal qualities and her station in life (see objects M51.1.269, M51.1.270). She appears to have just closed her book and removed her spectacles; their steel case is in her hand. She has been reading a meditation on mortality by James Hervey, an English Methodist divine. Rather than addressing the viewer, she looks thoughtfully beyond the frame. Her finely bound book is of English manufacture, and her glasses may be, as well. Family legend holds that her patterned wrap is Baltimore's first imported cashmere shawl.
Her daughter Sarah, married less than two years to Captain John O'Donnell, one of the wealthiest men in Baltimore, is depicted as a lady of grandeur, but here the conventions of English portraiture overtake the realities of provincial life (see object 62.94.1). Sarah's sashed gown, the elaborate brooch at her breast, the classical architecture of the park-like grounds, even her magnificent hairstyle, are all largely contrived. Nearly identical elements appear in a number of Peale's portraits of elite ladies. The miniature portrait of her husband is unique, however. A successful importer of goods from China, he had just left for a long sea voyage. The miniature, now owned by his descendents, was likely either a wedding gift or a memento presented on his departure.
Shortly after Captain O'Donnell returned to his Baltimore estate, his wife gave Peale a number of gifts from India and China for his museum: "an East Indian match gun, a damascus sword, Chinese chessmen, skull of the royal tiger, a live cockatoo, and other things," as the artist noted in his autobiography. In return, Peale spent June 16 to 18, 1791, painting a portrait of the couple's first child (see object 61.91.1). Mary O'Donnell is seated in her high chair; the holes for a restraining bar are visible at left and right. The fruit in her hand is a familiar emblem of childhood, and an ornate gold and coral toy is attached to her waist by a ribbon.
The three portraits remained in the family into the twentieth century, descending to the eldest daughter in each generation. They were on loan to the National Collection of Fine Arts at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from 1917, to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1945, and were given to what is now the Chrysler Museum of Art in the early1960s.
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