In 1769, a Maryland student living in London referred in a letter to a “Mr Peal a Man formed by nature for whatsoever Business he undertakes In London he has been exceedingly caressed by all our great Painters as a promising Genius.” The student was referring to Charles Willson Peale, a saddler from Annapolis, Maryland, turned aspiring artist, who would go on to become hone of the most prominent artists of his day. He was also celebrated as an inventor, scientist, founder of a public museum, and head of a distinguished family of artists, including his younger brother James Peale (see B.62.16 and B.85.2), and his children, among them Rembrandt Peale (see B.77.17).

This portrait of a child is one of the few paintings Peale completed during his two-year stint in London studying with Benjamin West (see B.67.26 and B.67.25), and it represents among the most ambitious paintings of his sojourn. A young child dressed in pink, turned slightly to engage the viewer, stands in an interior setting that includes a patterned carpet, a Chippendale side chair, a fireplace with glowing embers, a tea table, and two portraits hanging on the wall. An oval portrait representing an older gentleman hangs slightly above the sitter’s head, and the other, seen over the fireplace, duplicates the painting itself. The child clutches a toy horse with one hand and clasps the string that leads from it with his left hand. The string, caught on the skirt, pulls at the pink overgown, a detail that lends an air of informality and spontaneity to the scene.

Since this portrait was acquired, the gender and identity of the child have been questioned. In 1954, Peale scholar Charles Coleman Sellers suggested that the Bayou Bend portrait was exhibited publicly as A Portrait of a Girl with the Society of Artists in 1768. No other known Peale painting comes as close as the Bayou Bend picture to the description of the exhibited work. Sellers further speculated that the painting presented a challenge to John Singleton Copley (see B.54.31, B.54.21, B.54.25, B.54.18, B.54.26, B.54.27, B.54.29, B.54.28, and B.54.30), his closest rival in the colonies. The year before, Copley had exhibited Young Lady with a Bird and Dog (1767, Toledo), which had been severely criticized. Peale, the younger, aspiring artist, could have been offering a corrective to Copley’s painting of a similar subject: a young child at play in an interior setting with patterned carpet. This identity of the sitter as a girl and the identification of this painting with the picture exhibited in 1768 have, for the most part, been supported by Peale scholars.

The costume and toy prop, however, challenge the sitter’s identity as a girl. Costume experts have shown that dresses were worn by boys until they were breeched, and that the color of dress was not gender specific in the eighteenth century. Girls usually wore a cap or headdress with the front-fastened gown, and toy horses were generally pictured with male subjects only. Since 1987, the sitter has been identified as male. It is conceivable that the painting was incorrectly identified in the Society of Artists exhibition catalogue. The sitter may represent one of West’s children or, simply, someone who has not yet been identified.

Related examples: Similar paintings of a “picture within a picture” or a child playing with a toy horse can be seen in the conversation pieces of Johann Zoffany, specifically John, 14th Lord Willoughby de Broke and His Family, 1766, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.