Anna Claypoole Peale
1791–1878 · American painter of miniatures and still lifes
Anna Claypoole Peale (Philadelphia, 1791 – 1878) was an American painter known for portrait miniatures on ivory and for still lifes. She belonged to a large family of portraitists, which shaped her early training and her place in early nineteenth-century American painting.
She learned the craft by watching and practicing alongside her father, James Peale, with whom she trained for about five years. As a teenager she showed a sharp commercial sense: at fourteen she sold two copies of French landscapes at auction for a considerable sum. Around 1807 she painted Girl with a Book, and in 1811 she took part in the first exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, showing an oil still life. From 1814 she exhibited miniatures, and in 1824 she and her sister Sarah Miriam became the first women elected academicians there.
Her style relies on dark, bright colours that imitate the effect of oil paint rather than exploiting the translucency of ivory. Her sitters included President James Monroe and President Andrew Jackson. Her legacy lies in helping establish the miniature as a professional genre in the United States and in asserting the place of women painters within its art institutions.