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Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frederic G. Oppenheimer.

Anna de Peyster

Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frederic G. Oppenheimer.
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frederic G. Oppenheimer.
Contact us at copyright@samuseum.org for rights and reproduction of this image. Photography by Peggy Tenison.

Anna de Peyster

Artist: (American, 1741 - 1827)
Place made:United States
Date: 1798
Dimensions:
29 3/4 x 25 in. (75.6 x 63.5 cm)
Credit Line: San Antonio Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frederic G. Oppenheimer
Object number: 51.32.2
Signed: Signed and dated lower right: "C.W. Peale/Painted 1798"
Inscribed: Inscribed on back: "Anna de Peyster, consort of James W. De Peyster/Portrayed when 52 years old/1798"
Label Text
This set of portraits is all about marriage. The pleasant pair who regard the viewer, attired fashionably but not extravagantly, are New Yorkers Anna and James De Peyster, married first cousins. Their likenesses were captured thanks to another union—the marriage of James’s niece Elizabeth to the Philadelphia-based painter Charles Willson Peale in 1791. In 1798, Peale, Elizabeth and several of their children stayed with her uncle and aunt in New York, prompting the commission of several family portraits.

Charles Willson Peale was one of early America’s most active artistic and cultural entrepreneurs. Besides his career as a painter, he founded art schools and museums in several U.S. cities, and tirelessly advocated for the importance of art in the new nation’s public life. He also taught many of his large family to become artists, including his brother James and son Rembrandt, both represented in the Museum’s collections.

(William Keyse Rudolph, 2014)

On view


The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.