Notorious for secretly sketching Benjamin Franklin necking with a woman, his life-size depiction of two boys, The Staircase Group, began the trend of illusionist painting in America.
His public shows and "transparencies" were widely popular, though he suffered severe burns after his thousand-candle representation, Peace in the Clouds, set off 700 rockets. He studied in London where his first work of note, the allegorical Portrait of William Pitt, was produced. Notorious for secretly sketching Benjamin Franklin necking with a woman, his life-size depiction of two boys, The Staircase Group, began the trend of illusionist painting in America. An entrepreneur as well as a painter, he opened a namesake museum in Philadelphia and documented the unearthing of its greatest exhibit in Exhuming the Mastodon. FTP, name this painter of the Early Republic, perhaps best remembered for siring numerous sons, naming them for great artists, and painting the portrait Washington at the Battle of Princeton.
His public shows and "transparencies" were widely popular, though he suffered severe burns after his thousand-candle representation, Peace in the Clouds, set off 700 rockets.
Charles Wilson Peale