Deborah McClenachan Stewart (1763–1823) Artist: Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)

1782

American Paintings and Sculpture

On view, 2nd floor, American Art before 1900


Music, books, and a graceful manner mark this richly gowned young woman as aristocratic and cultivated. Charles Willson Peale, one of America’s leading portraitists, painted eighteen-year-old Deborah McClenachan’s portrait on the occasion of her marriage to Colonel Walter Stewart, aide-de-camp to General Horatio Gates in the Revolutionary War. She wears two miniatures: on her left arm, an image probably of her father, a well-to-do Philadelphia merchant; on her right, set in a multistranded pearl-and-gold bracelet, an image of her new husband.

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

50 1/8 × 40 1/8 × 3/4 in. (127.3 × 101.9 × 1.9 cm)

Credit Line

Gift of Robert L. McNeil, Jr., B.S. 1936S

Accession Number

1991.125.2

Geography

Made in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Culture

American

Period

18th century

Classification

Paintings

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Bibliography
  • Carol Soltis, The Art of the Peales in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Adaptations and Innovations (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2017), 36, fig. 2.1
  • Helen A. Cooper et al., Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2008), 206–7, no. 110, ill
  • Robin Jaffee Frank, Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 20, 21–23, fig. 13
Object copyright
No Copyright - United States
Additional information

Object/Work type

portraits

Subject

dresses fashion gowns hair hairstyles jewelry women

Signed

Signed LRC "WPeale. pinx 1782"

Technical metadata and APIs

IIIF

Open in Mirador

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