The Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (Muhammad Yaro) is an oil painting
on canvas by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) circa 1819.
I have been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art so many times
I cannot recall, but every time I go, I find something new. During our Museum
Practicum class trip last week, I heard the story of the Portrait of Yarrow Mamout, a painting by Charles Willson
Peale. The portrait is important because
it is one of the first paintings by an American of a man of African descent and
of a Muslim. I spent the classes free time trying to find the portrait before the museum closed.
The portrait had a long journey prior to being acquired by
the PMA. Peale heard of a man who was supposedly over 140 years old and painted Yarrow Mamout
while on a trip to Washington, DC. It
hung in Peale’s Philadelphia Museum on the upper floors of Independence
Hall. The painting was moved several
times after the artist’s death and sold in 1854. Unfortunately, in the confusion the painting
was mislabeled and sold at auction as Washington’s Servant. The buyer, Charles
S. Ogden later donated the portrait to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
in 1892. In 1947, Peale’s descendent
Charles Coleman Sellers correctly identified the painting. The PMA deaccessioned several works from its
own collection of American Art in order to purchase the portrait from the
Atwater Kent and prevent it from leaving the city of Philadelphia in October, 2011. The Portrait of Yarrow Mamout is now on display in Gallery 124 on the first floor of the PMA between a self-portrait of its creator, Charles Willson Peale, and Portrait of Anne Willing Bingham by Gilbert Stuart. I expected it to take center stage in the gallery, but instead it is hung near the corner on the same level as the self-portrait. (In my opinion, the presentation of the portraits in this way shows equality between the two men, artist and subject.)
Students of art, history, and museum studies can learn from
the portrait. Peale is an important American artist, father of several
significant artists, and founder of America’s first museum. I had seen works by Peale before, but this
was the first of his works I had seen after starting the Museum Education Program
at the University of the Arts. Two weeks
prior to the Museum Practicum trip, we discussed Peale in our Museology class.
This discussion helped inform my viewing of Yarrow
Mamout. (Students should also discuss
whether the portrait would still be as significant if it was still viewed as a
painting of George Washington’s slave.)
The Museum Education Department at the PMA developed an
educational poster for teachers. As a
former Six Grade Social Studies Teacher in New Jersey, I would want to develop
lesson plans for teachers covering colonization and the American Revolutionary
periods that would cross curriculums with art (studying Peale’s work), Language
Arts (reading the article about the PMA’s acquisition of the work) and possibly
even science (making and using old paint) prior to taking my students on a trip to the PMA.
Information and
photos taken from the Philadelphia Museum of Art website.
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