Charles Pettit

Artist Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)

Date1792

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 91.1 × 68.6 cm (35 7/8 × 27 in.)
framed: 112.1 × 89.5 cm (44 1/8 × 35 1/4 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Terms

Object number1919.121

DescriptionCharles Pettit is a half-length view of a seated man whose body faces forward and head is turned three-quarters to the left. The canvas is a standard kit-cat size (thirty-six by twenty-seven inches). Pettit wears a powdered wig of various shades of gray. He has blue eyes and thick, dark-brown eyebrows. His gaze is directed to the viewer’s left. He has a long, straight nose and a mouth whose corners are slightly upturned. His flesh tones are red and pink, with a hint of gray around the mouth and chin. The modeling is convincing though a bit hard, with brown lines used to define the contours of the sitter’s chin and jawline.

Pettit’s pose is relaxed, and his proper right elbow and forearm rest on a table at the left side of the composition. His right hand extends over the front edge of the table. His left hand rests atop a brown, leather-bound book; a pentimento on the lower half of the book suggests that Peale added this object to the painting after the composition was nearly complete.

Pettit sits in a carved, Chippendale-style side chair, the top corner of which is visible behind his left shoulder. The table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting. A black inkwell holds a quill; the inkwell is reflected in the polished wooden tabletop. Under Pettit’s elbow are several documents, illegibly inscribed.

The sitter wears a green suit, probably of wool, that has a high collar and large, cloth-covered buttons. The matching waistcoat has small, cloth-covered buttons; the second and third from the top are undone. He also wears a white stock and shirt ruffle and a single ruffle at each cuff. Peale suggested the horizontal folds in Pettit’s waistcoat by varying the green tones and by reinforcing the depths of the folds with dark-brown paint.

A swag of dark-red drapery behind the figure hangs from the upper left corner to the upper right part of the top edge of the composition. The background varies from dark gray on Pettit’s left to light gray along the right side of the image. A strong light, coming from the upper left to the lower right, illuminates Pettit’s face and casts shadows on the proper left side of his body. Shadows also help create the illusion of three-dimensionality in both Pettit’s form and clothes.
Label TextPeale's spare, yet congenial, depiction of the Philadelphian Charles Pettit (1736-1806) projects a tone of composed intelligence and cultivation that befits both artist and sitter. Like Peale, Pettit fought in the Continental Army; later he served in Congress (from 1785 to 1787) and founded the Insurance Company of North America. A well-educated and well-connected lawyer and merchant, Pettit was also a member of the American Philosophical Society and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. With his considerable energy, intellect, and personal generosity, Peale epitomized the self-taught Renaissance man during the dynamic years of early nationhood in America. After a brief career as a craftsman in a variety of trades in his native Maryland, he traveled in 1765 to London to study painting with Benjamin West (q.v.). Following the Revolution Peale emerged as the leading painter of distinguished patrons in the Middle Atlantic states. The museum he opened in 1786 in Philadelphia exhibited his portraits of patriots and statesmen along with nature specimens he had collected and catalogued. Peale left a long legacy, as a number of his seventeen children carried on his interests in the arts and sciences throughout much of the nineteenth century.ProvenanceThe sitter Charles Pettit (1736–1806); to his son Andrew Pettit (1762–1837); to his son Robert Pettit (1804–1878); to his son Robert Pettit (1846–after 1890); to his daughter Sara Pettit Hetherington (Mrs. Seth C. Hetherington) (b. 1877), by 1915. Purchased by the Worcester Art Museum from Frank W. Bayley, Copley Gallery, Boston.

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