Description:
Previously offered at Heritage Auctions with reserve in 2007 this remained unsold with an estimate of $40,000.-$60,000, now offered unreserved.
A miniature watercolor and gouache on ivory portrait of John Beale Bordley, He was Charles Willson Peale's best friend and had a profound influence on his life. Has his hair encased in a glass window on the reverse side.
John Beale Bordley, (February 11, 1727 Annapolis, Maryland – January 26, 1804 Philadelphia) was a Maryland planter and judge.He was the son of Thomas Bordley, from Yorkshire, England 1694, attorney general for Maryland, and his second wife Ariana Vanderheyden.
He was educated at the library of his step brother, Stephan Hadley, At the age to ten, he went to live with his uncle in Chestertown. He received his early education under the direction of the Chestertown Free School teacher, Charles Peale.He married Margaret Chew, (June 29, 1735 – November 11, 1773), in 1750, and went to live at Joppa, Maryland, then in the "wilderness" of Baltimore County. For the next 12 or 13 years he worked his plantation, and held the county clerkship. In 1768, he was one of the commissioners to help determine the boundary between Maryland and Delaware. On September 25, 1770, he was present at the Upper House of Assembly of Maryland. Later he moved to Baltimore City, where he was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court, and judge of the British Admiralty Court. He served as a member of Governor Horatio Sharpe's and Governor Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland's Councils.
In 1770, his wife inherited from the Chew family half of Wye Island, in Queen Anne's County, on the Chesapeake Bay, (the other half going to his sister-in-law, Mary, wife of William Paca). The Bordleys maintained their winter residence in Annapolis, they moved to his beautiful estate on Wye Island. They had four children: Thomas Bordley (born 1755- 1771), Matthias Bordley (born 1757–1818), Henrietta Maria Bordley (born 1762), John Beale Bordley, Jr. (born 1764–1815).After Margaret died, in 1777, he married Mrs. John Mifflin (Sarah Fishbourne) (October 20, 1733 – May 16, 1816), a widow of Philadelphia. (He became stepfather to Thomas Mifflin.) Then the Bordley family wintered in Philadelphia, and a large farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania, “Como Farm". He soon became a member of the American Philosophical Society. They had the daughter Elizabeth Bordley (1777–1863).
He is buried in St. Peter's Churchyard in Philadelphia. Como farm is now a golf course.In 1785, he encouraged the formation of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. The archives of the society are held at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania.
He developed an eight field system, which included three fields of clover in the rotation plan. He had hit upon the contribution of legumes to the soil. He also experimented with hemp, cotton, fruits, many kinds of vegetables, and animal husbandry. He established a profitable wheat trade with England and Spain, turning away from tobacco cultivation. Washington corresponded with him about wheat.He was a childhood friend of Charles Willson Peale, whose father was his tutor. He raised the funds to send Charles Willson Peale to London, where the young artist trained under Benjamin West in 1767, for two years. Bordley also helped Peale obtain his first major commission in America—two life-size portraits. His grandson John Beale Bordley (1800–1882) was also an artist, who studied with Peale.

Material:
Watercolor on Ivory

Maker/Artist:
Charles Willson Peale

Date:
18th cenutry

Provenance:
n/a

Size of Artwork:
H. 1 .12 x W 1. 43

Weight (LBS)
.031

Condition:
Very good condition, locket frame missing its cover.

History:
Born in Chester, Maryland in 1741, Charles Willson Peale became one of the major figures in American art and in other areas such as military figure, naturalist, curator, and inventor. He developed an art and natural history museum that became world famous, especially for the gallery of artwork that had his more than 250 portraits of distinguished Americans. In his home, Peale charged admission to persons to see his depictions of American heroes. By 1788, he opened a natural history museum in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and eventually accumulated over 100,000 items that included paintings, fossils, minerals, stuffed animals, and skeletons.In 1795, he opened his own art academy, which was not a success, and in 1805, he became one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy.His father was a schoolmaster who died prematurely, and Charles grew up as the eldest son in Annapolis, Maryland and helped support his widowed mother. He apprenticed in saddle making, silver smithing, sign painting and portraiture, and had several lessons with painter John Hesselius to whom he gave a saddle in exchange for instruction. He also studied in Boston with portraitist and silversmith John Singleton Copley and with painter John Smibert. When he returned to Maryland from his Boston training, his talent was recognized by men who were planters and they raised subscription money for him to study with expatriate history and portrait painter, Benjamin West, in London. He also studied the Italian masters in Italy. In 1769 he returned to Annapolis and there became an established portraitist in the neo-classical style learned from Benjamin West. For additional commissions, he traveled to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, Virginia and to Mount Vernon, home of George and Martha Washington. In 1775, he moved to Philadelphia where he hoped to find more portrait subjects. Shortly after, he joined the militia and fought with Washington at the battles of Princeton and Trenton, and during this period created miniatures of army personnel. In 1778, he settled in Philadelphia but continued to visit Baltimore and the eastern shore of Maryland.From 1810 to 1821, he lived as a gentleman farmer near Philadelphia but returned to the city in 1822 to take over the management of the Peale Museum.His fourteen portraits of George Washington include the first authentic likeness of him and include seven portraits painted from life. At Valley Forge where he was painting General Washington, Peale also painted portraits of many other colonial leaders including the Marquis de Lafayette.An outspoken anti-royalist, Peale served in the Revolutionary War and alienated many of his wealthy patrons with their British loyalties. From three marriages, he had three children, many whom became artists. In 1827, Charles Peale died at age 86, the result of catching a cold while crossing a body of water to court a woman.