Portraits in miniature: Anna Claypoole Peale and Caroline Schetky.

A small number of important eighteenth-century drawings and portrait miniatures by American women contribute to our understanding of colonial portraiture, but it was not until the early nineteenth century that such artists as Anna Claypoole Peale and Caroline Schetky actively began to seek patronage. From 1818 to 1826 they submitted portrait miniatures concurrently to exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and later encountered each others work in Boston exhibition halls. The two artists were only a year apart in age, and although it is dear that they knew of each other, whether they considered themselves to be competitors is an open ...