Watermelon

The daughter of James Peale, Sarah Miriam Peale was born in Philadelphia in 1800 into the celebrated Peale family of artists and is considered to be the first independent female professional artist in the United States. After studying under her cousin Rembrandt Peale, Sarah and her sister Anna Claypoole Peale became the first women elected to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1824.

Sarah and her father James enjoyed a creative symbiosis with each other’s work. Sarah often helped with finishing touches on her father’s paintings, while James was inspired by, and even occasionally replicated, his daughter’s still-life compositions. Ann Sue Hirshorn writes, “Her vital paintings of melons, grapes, and peaches were closer to James’s lavish and inventive still lifes in their interpretation of the bounties of nature, which both explored in depth in the 1820s” (“Anna Claypoole, Margaretta, and Sarah Miriam Peale: Modes of Accomplishment and Fortune,” The Peale Family: Creation of Legacy, 1770-1880, New York, 1996, p. 277). Sarah was also a highly sought-after portraitist who successfully won commissions over artists such as Thomas Sully. Her work is housed in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

A related painting of the same date titled Still Life with Watermelon is in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts.