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After Peale had executed a group picture of all his
family, he was "applied to by a Captain Maybury to draw his and his lady's portraits, and with some
entreaty I at last undertook, and for which I was to receive ten pounds, and this gave the first idea to me
that I possibly might do better by painting than with my other trades, and I accordingly began the
sign-painting business."
Peale had no idea how artists prepared and put on
colours, and he had never seen a palette or an easel; he worked out these details for himself, just as he
had designed his own watchmaking and silver-smithing tools. Remarkable as this story may seem to us today,
it had been enacted many times before on the rough continent of
North America, -and it was to be enacted many times
again during the westward movement that was for more than a hundred years continually to create new
frontiers. Peale did not regard painting as more difficult or more ambitious than his other trades. People
paid him for saddles, so he made saddles, and if people were willing to pay him for portraits, he would make
portraits too. Had someone imported a new kind of saddle from Europe, he would have studied it with
interest; in the same spirit, he studied a portrait of Cecilius Calvert attributed to Van Dyck which hung in
the courthouse. It never occurred to him that it was ridiculous to try, without any special training, to do
as well.
One day a particularly learned acquaintance mentioned another
kind of paint that was easier to put on than heavy oils secured from the coachmaker; he explained about
water colours. Fascinated, Peale made a special trip to Philadelphia to obtain some, but when he walked into
the city's only paint shop, he found he had no idea what to demand. "I knew only the names of such colours
as are inost commonly known." Having induced the shopkeeper to give him a price list of the pigments.most
generally used, he found his way to a bookstore, whose stock contained a single volume on
painting: The Handmaid of the
Arts, published anonymously by Robert
Dos-sie. He bought it and spent four days reading it at his lodgings in rapt amazement that there was so
much more to the craft of painting than he had imagined.
Told of a professional painter named Steele, Peale
in his anxiety for knowledge called on him at once, and was shown to a room where, he remembered, "the floor
was covered with drawings, prints, colours, and paintings on scraps of canvas in every direction." The
pictures all seemed to the saddler distorted and mis-coloured, especially a self-portrait in which the face
was tinted purple-red. The artist too seemed strange, with his wild eyes and quick gestures. Yet Peale, who
was beginning to realize how little he knew about art, was interested by all he saw and by the queer
jum-
180
America:s Old Masters
ble of words Steele poured out in a cascade. "I
intended to keep up
my acquaintance with
him."
However, when he called again to show the list of
colours he had received at the paint shop, his new friend behaved in so odd and violent a manner that
despite his need for instruction Peale felt a panicky desire to flee. But he could find no escape from the
strong hand that clutched his shoulder, from the wild eyes that burned into his own, until he was relieved
by a knock at the door. Steele, he remembered, "opened it cautiously,' when a person touched him and said:
'You are to go with me.' "
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