Twenty-year-old Walter Stewart immigrated to America from Ireland in 1776 to join the fight for independence, rapidly rising in the ranks of the Continental army. By 1781 he was colonel-in-charge of the Thirteenth and Third Pennsylvania Regiments. Charles Willson Peale captures the jaunty air of "the boy colonel," who was beloved by his troops and renowned for his bravery. Dressed in uniform with his congressional sword of honor on his hip, Stewart stands in the field with his troops camped in the background. In 1781, the year of his portrait, he married eighteen-year-old Deborah McClenachan, daughter of a wealthy Irish merchant from Philadelphia, and the following year commissioned her portrait from Peale (1991.125.2).