Charles Willson Peale
Charles Pettit, 1792

Technical Notes
The support is a plain-weave canvas with an average of eighteen threads per centimeter running vertically and twenty threads per centimeter running horizontally. The original tacking edges are gone, and there is no noticeable weave distortion along the edges of the image area.

The warm white ground has been evenly applied in a moderately thick layer that does not hide the canvas texture. The paint, which is generally opaque, is applied in varying thicknesses. A thin application of gray paint seems to have been used initially in the negative space around the head, leaving it in reserve; this underlayer ends at the collar on the viewer’s left side of the head and at the shoulder on the right side of the head.

Examination of the painting with a Hamamatsu infrared vidicon camera reveals that a similar method was employed for the hands (fig.1). The proper left hand in particular was left in reserve while the jacket and vest were painted; the position of the hand was later altered, and a pentimento is now visible where the hand overlaps with the reserve area and where the jacket had already been painted. Pentimento also is visible on the book cover, where the edge of the underlying waistcoat now shows through.

Figure 1. Infrared reflectogram of detail of Peale's reserve of the proper left hand and the changes he made to its position.


Overlapping paint layers show that Peale painted most of the coat and waistcoat before the white cuffs and neckwear. He painted the general form of the cuffs with thin applications of white and gray, then included the surrounding shadows, and, finally, added the thick white highlights on the cuffs. Overlapping paint also indicates that the quill, inkwell, and paper were painted after the table and coat were completed.

Small scattered losses are located mostly in the upper-left and upper-right background. Flaking has required consolidation in past conservation treatments. The paint surface is especially abraded along the contour of the proper right arm and in the upper-right background. The side of the nose and the proper left cheek have been slightly retouched.

The painting was last cleaned in 1982, when coatings of Acryloid B-72 were applied to revarnish the surface. There is no noticeable discoloration, but the varnish is somewhat matte.

Frame Notes
The frame consists of a softwood molding gilded over a red bole layer. The corners are mitered and have cross-spline construction on the back. The frame has both carved and applied composition ornament. The inner edge is a shallow cove, followed by a band of neoclassical palmette ornaments, then a deep cove, a carved band of half-round chain-bead ornament, and a convex quarter-round outer edge.