Rosalba Carriera Peale


Rosalba Carriera Peale was an American portraitist, landscape painter, and lithographer. She was the eldest daughter of artist Rembrandt Peale and granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale.

Early life

Rosa was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1799 and was named after Rosalba Carriera, a Venetian Rococo painter who specialized in portrait miniatures. She was the eldest of nine children born to Eleanor May Peale and her husband, Rembrandt Peale, an artist and museum keeper who was a prolific portrait painter. After her mother's death in 1836, her father remarried to one of his art students, Harriet Cany, who continued to paint after their marriage in 1840.
Her paternal grandparents were Rachel, Rubens Peale, Franklin Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale.

Career

Rosalba was tutored in art by her father and raised her as an independent and strong-minded woman. Her contemporary, John Neal, an author and critic, wrote that Rosa's "mind is excellent. Her father has always taught her to think for herself, to reason, and to be firm, without wrangling or argument, in the expression of her opinions."
Following in her father's and grandfather's footsteps, Rosalba became an artist in her own right. She was known as an accomplished portraitist, landscape painter, and lithographer. She was also known for her abilities as a "copyist".
In 1873, she presented her father's painting, Washington before Yorktown, which was valued at $10,000, to the Mount Holly Association of New Jersey.

Personal life

Reportedly, she had many suitors, but refused to wed "the everyday man," instead choosing to wait until October 1860, when she was sixty-two years old, to marry widower John Allen Underwood. Underwood, who lived in England for a number of years, was an "eminent merchant of New York City" and traveled often.
Her husband died on January 7, 1869 in Yonkers, New York. Rosalba died at age 75 on November 15, 1874 in Bustleton, Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. She was buried at Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.