fuckyeahamericanart:Charles Wilson Peale, [Self-Portrait with a Mastodon Leg Bone], 1824“Charles Wil

fuckyeahamericanart:Charles Wilson Peale, [Self-Portrait with a Mastodon Leg Bone], 1824“Charles Willson Peale established himself in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century as one of the foremost portrait painters in America, having spent two years abroad in the late 1760s studying his craft in London under the tutelage of the American-born artist, Benjamin West. Later in his career, Peale devoted himself mainly to the creation and management of the Peale Museum in Philadelphia. In his last self-portrait, Peale chose to commemorate his greatest contribution to science: the excavation of two fossilized mastodon skeletons from a glacial bog near Newburgh, New York in 1801. Peale is pictured with an enormous leg bone, which was incorporated into the reconstructed skeleton and displayed in his museum.”via the New York Historical Society -- source link

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