John B. Pendleton

Artist Rembrandt Peale American, 1778-1860

Dateabout 1828

DimensionsFrame: 36 × 31 × 2 1/2 in. (91.4 × 78.7 × 6.4 cm)
Canvas: 31 1/8 × 25 1/8 in. (79.1 × 63.8 cm)

MediumOil on canvas.

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1941.34

Not on View

Collections

Paintings

Published ReferencesSwan, M., The Athenaeum Gallery, 1827-1873, Boston, 1940, p. 38.

The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 107, Sept. 1944, repr.

Slayman, James H., "The Age of Good Feeling," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 2, no. 2, Autumn 1959, p. 14.

Tatham, D., "The Pendleton-Moore Shop, Lithographic Artists in Boston, 1825-1840," Old-Time New England, LXII, Oct.-Dec. 1971, repr. frontispiece.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 90, pl. 20.

Ristow, Walter, "Maps by Pendleton's Lithography," The Map Collector, Nov. 1982, repr. p. 27.

Exhibition HistoryBoston Athenaeum, Second Exhibition of Paintings, 1828, no. 137 (lent by J. Pendleton).

Detroit Institute of Arts, The Peale Family: Three Generations of American Artists, 1967, no. 150, repr Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, N.Y. 1963.

Label TextJohn B. Pendleton (1798–1866) and his older brother William were pioneers in commercial lithography in America. In 1825 the Pendletons opened the first lithography firm in the country, in Boston, and they published all but three of Rembrandt Peale’s lithographs. This portrait was exhibited in Boston in 1828, so was presumably painted in or shortly before that year, at a time when Peale and John Pendleton were working closely together. The Pendleton brothers had close ties with the Peale family, many of whom were artists (look for Still Life with Oranges by Rembrandt’s brother Raphaelle Peale in this gallery). Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt’s father and a painter himself, started the first museum in America in Philadelphia in 1786. In 1814 Rembrandt Peale followed his father’s example and opened Peale’s Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts. The Pendletons helped to install a gas lighting system in the museum.