Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741 to February 22, 1827) was an American painter. He worked as a soldier and naturalist also. Peale began as what is called an itinerant painter, collecting funds from people he painted while traveling. His skill was so great that his portraits of George Washington are called the best we have now.
According to Daniel Boorstin, in his The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson, (1960):
When Dr. Morgan (Rush's predecessor as Professor of Medicine) gave Peale some mammoth bones from the Ohio, when Franklin presented him with a French Angora cat, and when he received a paddle fish from the Allegheny River, he conceived [the plan for a museum of natural history.].
Peale was one of the first to paint natural settings around his museum displays. Boorstin also says that Peale engraved the animals brought back by Lewis and Clark.
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