Michael Angelo and Emma Clara Peale

Peale's studies of French Neoclassical painting during a sojourn in Paris (1808–10) helped him to break free from the British eighteenth-century conventions that he had learned from his portraitist father, Charles Willson Peale. Peale's resplendent palette, along with his ability to render warm flesh tones, manipulate light, and emphasize textures suggests that while in France, he studied not only the works of modern painters, but also paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and other Baroque masters. Michael Angelo (1814–1833) and Emma Clara (1816–1839) were the youngest of the artist's nine children