Edward Sheegog by Anna Claypoole Peale, signed & dated 1839.

  This portrait, called Edward Sheegog,  descended in the Sheegog/Keller family.  It is possibly the Edward Sheegog (1810-1893) born in Ireland who lived in Maury Co., Tennessee.   It appears that his sister, Jane Sheegog, also born in Ireland, married Andrew Spottswood Keller.   Edward Sheegog and his wife Martha Louise, also had a daughter named Jane born in 1848 who died in infancy.  
 
Set in a gold and gilt metal brooch frame with cast foliate border and hanging loop.  The miniature is fully signed on the backing paper "Painted by/ Mrs. A. C. Staughton/ Philada/ 1839."
 
2 1/4 inches high.
 
Anna Claypoole Peale (1791-1878) was the daughter of James Peale, the niece of Charles Willson Peale and the granddaughter of James Claypoole (Philadelphia's first portrait painter).  She was trained by her father and encouraged by her uncle, who took her to Washington in 1818, arranging for her to paint President James Monroe and General Andrew Jackson (Yale University Art Gallery).  Peale began exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1811, and was elected an Academician in 1824.  The only other female artist to receive that honor was her sister, Sarah Miriam Peale, with whom Anna shared a studio.  Anna had a thriving business, with studios in Baltimore and Philadelphia, and trips to New York, Boston and Washington.  Her 1829 marriage to Reverend William Staughton ended in tragedy when he died only a few months after the wedding.  She married again in 1841 to General William Duncan, apparently giving up her work at that point.  Anna Claypoole Peale was, without doubt, the most important female miniaturist in America.
 
Provenance: Collection of G. Vernon Diab of Louisville.

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