Charles Willson Peale is a monumental figure in the history of American art. A tireless patriot, scientist, and patriarch, Peale established the country's first museums (in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York)
and fathered a dynasty of American artists. Peale's portraits of three generations of women in the Elliott and O'Donnell families, an illustrious Baltimore mercantile clan, highlight the virtues appropriate to each
stage of an eighteenth-century woman's life: a child's innocence, a young matron's beauty and devotion, and the mature piety of a grandmother.
Mary Chew Elliott was the wife of Thomas Elliott, a merchant
and ship's captain. She appears to have just removed her spectacles -their steel case is in her hand. The glasses as well as her finely bound book (a meditation on mortality by a popular theologian) are probably
of English manufacture. Family legend holds that her patterned wrap is Baltimore's first imported cashmere shawl, a gift from her daughter Sarah's husband John O'Donnell, a successful importer of goods from China
and one of the wealthiest men in Baltimore.
Sarah O'Donnell (62.94.1) is portrayed as a lady of grandeur in the English tradition. She holds a miniature portrait of her husband, a wedding gift, perhaps,
or a memento presented on his departure for the East. O'Donnell was at sea when the portrait was made; on his return Sarah gave Peale a number of gifts from India and China for his museum. In gratitude, Peale painted
a portrait of the couple's first child, Mary, in 1791. Mary O'Donnell (61.91.1) is seated in her high chair, the holes for a restraining bar visible at left and right. The fruit in her hand is a familiar emblem
of childhood, and an ornate gold and coral toy -a whistle- is attached to her waist by a ribbon.
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