Rosalba Carriera Peale

File:Rembrandt Peale - The Sisters (Eleanor and Rosalba Peale) - Google Art Project.jpg

Rosa was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1799 and was named after Rosalba Carriera, a Venetian Rococo artist who specialized in portrait miniatures and pastel.{{cite news |last1=Associated Press |title=From amateur dentist to artist |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/173034400/?terms=Rosalba%2BPeale%2BUnderwood |accessdate=16 May 2019 |work=The Baltimore Sun |date=5 Jun 1997 |page=71 |language=en|author1-link=Associated Press }} She was the eldest of nine children born to Eleanor May (née Short) Peale (1776–1836) and her husband, Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), an artist and museum keeper who was a prolific portrait painter.{{cite book |title=The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family: Charles Willson Peale: his last years, 1821-1827 |date=1983 |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution |isbn=978-0-300-02576-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dCCTMvMlfzwC |accessdate=16 May 2019 |language=en}} After her mother's death in 1836, her father remarried to one of his art students, Harriet Cany, who continued to paint after their marriage in 1840.{{cite web |title=The Peale Family: Creation of an American Legacy, 1770-1870 |url=http://tfaoi.org/aa/1aa/1aa124.htm |website=tfaoi.org |publisher=Traditional Fine Arts Organization |accessdate=16 May 2019}}

Her paternal grandparents were Rachel (née Brewer) Peale and Charles Willson Peale, also a prominent painter. Among her large family were many prominent people, including Raphaelle Peale (a painter), Rubens Peale (a museum administrator and artist), Franklin Peale (Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint), and Titian Ramsay Peale (who became a naturalist).{{cite book |last1=Karpel |first1=Bernard |last2=Art |first2=Archives of American |title=Arts in America: a bibliography |date=1979 |publisher=Published for the Archives of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press |isbn=9780874745788 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O-FUAAAAMAAJ |accessdate=16 May 2019 |language=en}}

File:Girl at a Window (Rosalba Peale).jpg

Rosalba was tutored in art by her father and raised her as an independent and strong-minded woman. Her contemporary, John Neal, an author and critic, wrote that Rosa's "mind is excellent. Her father has always taught her to think for herself, to reason, and to be firm, without wrangling or argument, in the expression of her opinions."Miller, Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860, A Life in the Arts, 1985.

Following in her father's and grandfather's footsteps, Rosalba became an artist in her own right. She was known as an accomplished portraitist, landscape painter, and lithographer.{{cite book |last1=Morgan |first1=Ann Lee |title=The Oxford Dictionary of American Art & Artists |date=2018 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191073885 |page=449 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2FByDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT449 |accessdate=16 May 2019 |language=en}} She was also known for her abilities as a "copyist".{{cite book |last1=Calvin |first1=Paula E. |last2=Deacon |first2=Deborah A. |title=American Women Artists in Wartime, 1776-2010 |date=2011 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=9780786486755 |page=190 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zaCzbFS_jAgC&pg=PA190 |accessdate=16 May 2019 |language=en}}

In 1873, she presented her father's painting, Washington before Yorktown, which was valued at $10,000 (equivalent to ${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|10000|1873}}}} today), to the Mount Holly Association of New Jersey.{{cite news |title=Personal and Literary |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31632613/personal_and_literary/ |accessdate=16 May 2019 |work=The Representative |date=4 Jul 1873 |language=en}}

Reportedly, she had many suitors, but refused to wed "the everyday man," instead choosing to wait until October 1860, when she was sixty-two years old, to marry widower John Allen Underwood (1798–1869).{{cite web |title=Portrait of Rosalba Peale |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/portrait-rosalba-peale-19321 |website=americanart.si.edu |publisher=Smithsonian American Art Museum |accessdate=16 May 2019}} Underwood, who lived in England for a number of years, was an "eminent merchant of New York City" and traveled often.{{cite book |last1=Underwood |first1=Lucien Marcus |last2=Banker |first2=Howard James |title=The Underwood families of America |date=1913 |publisher=New Era Printing Co. |location=Lancaster, Pa. |url=https://archive.org/details/underwoodfamilie01unde/page/n8 |accessdate=16 May 2019}}

Her husband died on January 7, 1869, in Yonkers, New York. Rosalba died at age 75 on November 15, 1874, in Bustleton, Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania. She was buried at Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.

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• [https://search.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.B.P31-ead.xml Peale-Sellers Family Collection, 1686-1963] at the American Philosophical Society.

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Category:1799 births

Category:1874 deaths

Rosalba

Category:Painters from Philadelphia

Category:American portrait painters

Category:19th-century American painters

Category:19th-century American women painters

Category:Women lithographers

Category:19th-century lithographers

Category:American lithographers

Category:19th-century American printmakers