Books and Manuscripts

The Birds and Beasts Will Teach Thee! A Very Rare Admission Ticket to Charles Willson Peale's Pioneering Philadelphia Museum

[Peale, Charles Willson]
Admission Ticket to Peale's Philadelphia Museum
(Philadelphia, after 1788). Engraved single-entry admission ticket (No. 35), designed and engraved by Charles Willson Peale, signed and numbered at bottom “T. Peale A.M” (presumably Titian Peale I or II). 2 1/2 x 3 5/8 in. (63 x 92 mm). Light soiling on recto and verso, top left corner creased, small closed tear in bottom left corner, top edge slightly trimmed. 

An exceptionally rare admission ticket to Charles Willson Peale's groundbreaking Philadelphia Museum, the first successful public museum in the United States. Charmingly engraved with a scene of exotic animals, this single-entry admission ticket cost 25 cents and entitled the bearer to view the museum’s “Wonderful works of Nature! and Curious works of Art”. The fanciful illustration and paraphrase from Job (“The birds and beasts will teach thee!”) is representative of the museum's mission to depict the “world in miniature” through a blend of art and science in its hundreds of displays of animal specimens, cultural artifacts, and man-made and natural curiosities.

Signed “T. Peale A.M”, presumably either Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780-98)—Charles's youngest son from his first marriage, to Rachel Brewer (1744–1790)—or Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799-1885)—the youngest son from his second marriage, to Elizabeth de Peyster (1765-1804). The inscription “A.M” possibly refers to “American Museum” (the museum's name in the early 1790s) or some playful self-applied title ("assistant manager", etc.). Both Titians were integral to the museum's operations. Before his untimely death at age 18 of yellow fever, Titian I was Charles's first serious assistant, as well as an accomplished taxidermist, and a promising naturalist. He assisted his father on several early trips that collected numerous animals and insects for the museum's collection. His taxidermy work was prized for its accuracy, was used in the museum's early displays, and was exchanged with foreign naturalists for other scientific specimens for the museum's collection. He appears alongside his brother Raphaelle in his father's 1795 painting, Staircase Group. Titian II was named after his deceased half-brother, and like him, assisted his father in the preservation of animals at the museum. He became an accomplished naturalist and scientific illustrator in his own right, and participated in several high-profile scientific explorations, including Stephen H. Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains, and was chief naturalist during the United States Exploring Expedition. Several of his butterflies and insects collected during these expeditions were displayed at the Philadelphia Museum. Peale's other sons, Raphaelle (1774-1825), Rembrandt (1778-1860), Rubens (1784-1865), and Franklin (1795-1870), were similarly involved in helping maintain and operate the museum over its nearly seventy years of operations. Following Charles's death, in 1827, the museum was variously run by Rubens and Franklin.

This is the earliest ticket design and format issued by the museum, illustrated and engraved by Charles Willson Peale sometime around 1788. Unlike the other known ticket designs the museum employed, this example is by far the most imaginative and illustrative.

Peale’s museum first opened in 1786 at his house on Third and Lombard Streets. An outgrowth of his popular portrait gallery, it quickly evolved from showcasing his paintings of Revolutionary War heroes into an eclectic body of objects from the natural and man-made worlds. Conceived on Enlightenment principles of order, harmony, and the boundless capacity of human knowledge, its mission was democratic and sought to create an “educated and virtuous citizenry” (Hart and Ward, The Waning of the Enlightenment Ideal, p. 222). With a ticket such as this the public could view “Portraits of Illustrious Personages, distinguished in the late Revolution of America, and other Paintings--Also, a Collection of preserved Beasts, Birds, Fish, Reptiles, Insects, Fossils, Minerals, Petrifications, and other curious objects, natural and artificial.” (Sellers, Mr. Peale's Museum…, p. 38) 

The museum's collection was the first in America to be ordered using Linnaean classification, and it displayed specimens and objects in innovative dioramas that mimicked naturalistic settings. Although the collection began small, largely from animals hunted by Peale and his sons, it rapidly grew from exchanges with foreign naturalists and from individual donations by public and private individuals (George Washington donated a Chinese pheasant). A wide variety of specimens (alive and stuffed) and artifacts were exhibited, including a paddlefish (the museum's first donation), an albatross, a piece of the Bastille, pieces from William Penn's bed, a 17-foot long shark, a feather helmet from Hawaii and other ethnographic objects, a petrified snake, the bones of a mastodon (exhumed by Peale and his sons), to more sensational objects like the trigger finger of a murderer, and a deformed cow and chicken. To encourage visitors Peale published his most recent acquisitions in Philadelphia's newspapers, offered public lectures given by himself, his sons, and eminent naturalists, hosted specialized exhibitions, and showcased cutting-edge technologies (notably the physiognotrace, a semi-automated silhouette portrait tracing device). 

As the collection expanded so did the need for space to showcase it and, in 1795, Peale moved the museum to the American Philosophical Society. This included for the first time an outdoor menagerie of live bears, monkeys, and other animals. Less than a decade later this too would prove inadequate to contain Peale's voracious collecting habits. In 1802, after lobbying the Pennsylvania Legislature, Peale was granted use of the top floors of the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall). It was during this period that the museum reached its peak in popularity and was at its most financially prosperous. The new space included rooms dedicated to quadrupeds and marine animals and was centered around the 100-foot-long “Long Room” that housed over 700 birds and 4,000 insects. It was here that the first public display of artifacts and specimens from the Lewis and Clark expedition was exhibited, as well as specimens collected by Titian II while on expedition to the Rocky Mountains with Stephen H. Long. Over the next two decades the museum moved to three more locations in Philadelphia, but due to growing expenses and competition from similar museums, it closed at the end of the 1840s. The collection was sold by the Peale family in 1848 and in 1854, largely to P.T. Barnum, Moses Kimball, among others, the majority of which was later destroyed by fire.

We have been able to locate only nine Philadelphia Museum tickets in institutional or private collections, including five at the American Philosophical Society, one at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, one at the Worcester Art Museum, one at the University of Pennsylvania, and one in the Collection of Elise Peale Patterson de Gelpi-Toro. Of these, only two are of the same design and format as this ticket, at the Worcester and in the Gelpi-Toro collection.

This is perhaps the first ticket of this kind from Peale's museum to ever come to auction. The only other similar example we can locate, according to RBH, was sold at Henkels in 1904, for admission to Peale's "picture gallery. June, 1786”.

A very rare and ephemeral piece of Philadelphia history.