
Image

Yarrow Mamount, by Charles Willson Peale, 1819.
Credit: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection, Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia
This 1819 portrait of Yarrow Mamount, completed when Peale was seventy-nine, is one of the rare portraits of African Americans in the early 1800s. When they met, Peale found Mamount, who claimed to be 134 years old, still "healthy, active and full of fun."