Youngest son (and sixteenth child) of artist
and naturalist Charles
Willson Peale, Titian Peale II showed an early interest in natural
history. He was born on November 2, 1799 (not long after the death of his
brother Titian) and died in 1885. Titian was first exposed to the study
of natural history while assisting his father on his many excursions in
search of specimens for the Peale Museum. The family moved to Germantown,
outside of Philadelphia, where the young boy began collecting and drawing
insects and butterflies. Like his brothers, Titian helped his father in
the preservation of the museum's specimens for display, including contributions
from George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Titian's drawings were
published in Thomas Say's American Entomology as early as 1816,
and he was soon after elected to the Academy of Natural Sciences. Later
in life, Titian contributed to the museum collection with many animals
and plants he had collected during travels to the West and the Rocky Mountains.
By the 1830's, after Charles Willson Peale's death, Titian had became head
curator and naturalist at the museum. In 1831, Titian published a pamphlet
known as Circular of the Philadelphia Museum: Containing Direction for  the
preservation and preparation of objects of natural history. He developed
an effective method for storing butterflies in glass-fronted cases; as
a result, parts of his collection have been preserved until the present
day. His meticulous collection of over 100 separate butterfly species was
often praised for the brilliance and vibrancy of the insects' colors. The
Peale museum continued to gain a worldwide reputation, as evident in a
European review of the museum by Prince Maximilian: "the Museum of Mr.
Titian Peale, which contains the best collection of natural history in
the United States is the only American collection of any interest to me
and worthy of attention." While under Titian's management, the museum acquired
a rare rhinoceros
for display. In 1838, two years after Darwin
had returned from his voyage on the Beagle, Titian took leave from
his work at the museum to sail aboard the Peacock as chief naturalist.
Other members of the crew included Horatio Emmons Hale, philologist; James
Dwight Dana, author of Zoophytes (1846); Dr. Charles Pickering,
physician and naturalist; Joseph P. Couthouy, conchologist; William Rich
and William D. Brackenridge, botanists; and Alfred Agate and Joseph Drayton,
artists. The expedition set sail for the Cape Verde Islands, touring Rio
de Janeiro, Rio Negro, Cape Horn, Valparaiso, Antarctica, Lima, the Tuamoto
Archipelago, the Society Islands, Australia and Tahiti. Titian, as chief
naturalist, collected and preserved various specimens of natural history,
many of which he packed and shipped back to museum. Titian had also been
on an expedition in 1818-21 during which he acquired a wild turkey for
the museum's collections. Titian I (Charles Willson Peale's oldest son)
had published Drawings of American Insects, Showing them in their several
states before his death in 1799. Unlike his deceased older brother,
however, the second Titian's work on insects, The Butterflies of North
America, was never published, although the manuscript still resides
at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. On May 1, 1843,
financial pressures led Titian Peale to sell the bankrupt museum at a sheriff's
sale to Isaac Brown Parker. The youngest Peale went on to work for the
U. S. Patent Office and to become a pioneer American photographer. |
| Butterfly boxes
on display at The Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia)
White Squirrel (1821)--from CGFA online gallery |