'Art conceal'd': Peale's double portrait of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming

14. Sellers, 183, no. 742; replica, 183, no. 743, pl. 269. The only other double portrait listed in Sellers (146-47, no. 572) is of two men, Gouverneur and Robert Morris (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia).

15. Both paintings are illustrated in E. P. Richardson, B. Hindle, and L. B. Miller, Charles Willson Peale and His World, New York, 1982, 44, 205.

16. For a discussion of American family portraits of this period as generally less hierarchical and more intimate, see Lovell (as in n. 8), 251; she compares the Laming portrait with Benbridge's and with two other double portraits, by John Singleton Copley and John Trumbull.

17. For examples of the clothing worn by late 18th-century Englishwomen, see C. W. Cunnington and P. Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century, Boston, 1972, 266-94. Ralph Earl's American portraits of the 1780s show similar fashions; see the costume notes by A. Ribeiro in E. M. Kornhauser, Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic, New Haven/London, 1991, 140, 142, 157, 163, 168-69.

18. Laming's costume is very similar to that seen in Ralph Earl's Daniel Boardman (1789; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), Elijah Boardman (1789; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge and Son William Tallmadge (1790; Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Conn.). See Kornhauser (as in n. 17), 152-56, nos. 28, 29; and 172-75, no. 37.

19. For a discussion of landscape settings in American portraiture before 1820, see K. A. Lawson, "A New World of Gladness and Exertion: Images of the North American Landscape in Maps, Portraits, and Serial Prints before 1820," Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1988.

20. Sellers, 213-14, no. 884, pl. 67.

21. The exception to this seems to be found in some of Peale's three-quarter-length portraits, including Mrs. John Dickinson and Her Daughter Sally and Mrs. Robert Morris. None of these sitters, however, is portrayed seated on the ground.

22. The flowers and peaches were identified by Dan H. Nicolson, curator, Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. For the plants grown on Maryland estates in this period, see B. Sarudy, "A Late Eighteenth-Century 'Tour' of Baltimore Gardens," Journal of Garden History, IX, no. 3, 1989, 125-40, apps. 2, 5. Red clover was frequently advertised in Baltimore newspapers; see Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, 1788, passim.

23. E. R. Bevan, "Gardens and Gardening in Early Maryland," Maryland Historical Magazine, XLV, no. 4, 1950, 243-70; A Relation of the Successful Beginnings of the Lord Baltemore's Plantation in Mary-Land, London, 1634, cited in Bevan, 244; and Sarudy (as in n. 22), 129, 154-55, 159.

24. The identification was made by Dr. Gary R. Graves, an ornithologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, specializing in tropical American birds.

25. Peale Papers, I, 536-43.

26. Peale, Diary 7, May 30-Nov. 3, 1788, in Peale Papers, I, 529, 533-43. Quoted material is reproduced as published, with editorial corrections in brackets and Peale's crossouts in italics within angled brackets.