Credit: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison Jr. Collection), 1878.1.2
An avid naturalist, Charles Willson Peale in 1786 founded the nation's first museum. Peale received and then displayed important specimens from the Lewis and Clark expedition, including a prong-horned antelope and a large California condor. Peale painted this self portrait, The Artist in his Museum, in 1826.
