The following description for has been prepared entirely by the current owner, Roberts S. Fastov, Esq., and, at the collector’s request, has not been edited by Sloans & Kenyon

Note 1) Thomas Fitzgerald (1749-December 30, 1822) was born in Farane, Waterford County, Ireland and died in Philadelphia. Fitzgerald was a friend of Charles Willson Peale and served with him in the Continental Army during the War of Independence. Peale painted portraits of Revolutionary War participants, that he admired or deemed significant, and which he hung in his Gallery of Famous Men in the nation's first public museum, the Philadelphia Museum, which was founded and operated by Peale. He also often painted replicas of these museum portraits, particularly for the sitter or his family. This auction portrait is the original, not a the replica, of the Fitzgerald portrait that hung in such museum. The above other version of this auction Fitzgerald portrait suggests that such version, not the portrait being offered today, was the replica of the portrait being offered today, as its extensive provenance, per the Frick Art Reference Library, FRESCO, made no reference to its ever being in the collection of or exhibited at Peale's Museum and started with: "Mrs. Edward MacFunn Biddle, Philadelphia, great-great-granddaughter of the subject (Emphasis added),” which makes reasonably certain that such version was a replica, that was painted for Fitzgerald himself or his family. A comparison of the photographs of both these paintings makes reasonably clear that the painting being offered today is more vigorous and spontaneous than the other version; and, thus, is more likely to be the original, than the other version, which was a copy/replica of the painting being offered today.

What appears to resolve this issue is the fact that this auction's version of Fitzgerald, which was added to Peale's Gallery of Famous Men, was painted in an oval format, per the following: "The uniform format and framing of Peale's worthies, as well as their arrangement in two long unbroken ranks further systematizes the images to strengthen the political point. Peale's museum as a whole and the Gallery of Famous Men, as part of it, made metapolitical point, in which faction disappeared and politics was first sacralized into the national myth and then naturalized so that the Republic appeared inevitable and inviolate. To reinforce this sense of uniformity Peale adopted the bust portrait in oval that Hogarth had devised to synthesize sculpture and painting, (Emphasis and bold face added)." Charles Willson Peale: Art And Selfhood In The Early Republic. by David C. Ward, 2004. In addition, Lillian B. Miller, who was then Editor of the Peale Family Papers, who inspected this Peale painting, stated in a note of October 24, 1986 with the Peale Family Papers letterhead, that: “The oval nature of the portrait suggests that the elder Peale painted it to hang in his Philadelphia Museum with other portraits of revolutionary heroes.”

Note 2) See Note 1), Note 2) and Note 3) of the immediately preceding Peale portrait lot.