Like his famous father, Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale engaged in wide-ranging pursuits including painting, natural history, and business; he was also instrumental in founding the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Society of American Artists, and the Peale Museum in Baltimore. Although he never approached his father's renown as an artist, Rembrandt Peale's many achievements mark him as a key figure in nineteenth-century America. Many of his portraits are masterpieces; his textbooks on graphics were used in schools for many years; and his Notes on Italy (1831), a record of an extensive European tour, remains valuable for its descriptions of contemporary European civilization and art and its delineation of American artistic perceptions and aspirations in the nineteenth century.

The seventh child, second son, and third surviving child of Charles Willson Peale and Rachel Brewer Peale, Rembrandt Peale was proud to have been born on 22 February 1778, the birthday...