ANDREW JACKSON IN 1819. AGE 52. PAINTED BY C. W. PEALE.
From the original portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale; now in the possession of Mr. Stan V. Henkels, Philadelphia. Canvas, 23 by 28 inches. Charles Willson Peale was a truly remarkable man, and in nothing more so than in his virility. At the age of eighty-two he wrote to Commodore Porter, "My health continues so good as to enable me to pursue my labors of the brush, even without the use of spectacles, and I may yet hope to raise my name as artist, as well as naturalist, and thus leave a monument of industry to my country." This last allusion is to his having abandoned the easel upon his discovery of the mammoth in 1801 and devoted himself thereafter to natural history, until he resumed art experimentally upon a visit to Washington, instigated thereto by the pleasure he derived from the work of his son Rembrandt. He arrived in Washington November 19, 1818, and remained until January 30, 1819. In this brief period he painted nineteen portraits for his Museum Gallery, beginning with the President, Monroe, and ending with Andrew Jackson. January 23d he writes, "Yesterday General Jackson arrived, and this morning Colonel Johnson, at my request, spoke to him to obtain his consent to sit. I then waited on him to make an appointment. He will sit after breakfast to-morrow." January 24th he writes, "I have begun a portrait to-day of General Jackson and he will give me another sitting at sun-rising to-morrow morning." On the 27th he writes, "To-morrow morning I shall put the finish to General Jackson's portrait." From this record it will be seen that the portrait reproduced was painted in three, or not more than four, sittings.
