Credit: Courtesy of The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison Jr. Collection), 1878.1.2
A man of broad interests and talents, Philadelphian Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) painted more than 300 portraits of prominent American men and women. In this famous 1822 self-portrait titled The Artist in his Museum, 1822, Peale placed himself in front of the main exhibit room to his natural history museum - the nation's first - then located on the second floor of Independence Hall.
