Thomas Jefferson and Charles Willson Peale were good friends born two years & two days apart who died within seven months of each other. They knew everyone who was anyone among the Revolutionary elite. Jefferson sat at the negotiating table and the dinner table with each of the founding fathers. And those very Revolutionaries sat for CW Peale to paint their portraits capturing their images and preserving them for history. Through Jefferson and Peale’s letters and conversations, we learn the “inside scoop” on the Revolution and gain insight into the minds of the men that - “Imagined a New Nation”.

 CW Peale, Maryland saddle-maker-turned-painter, traveled the Middle Colonies painting the Colonial elite. His portrait of George Washington in 1772 was the first of seven. His Washington at Trenton was sold in 2006 for $24,000,0000 - the highest paid for an American portrait. Peale joined the Continental Army serving with Washington and continued throughout to paint its leaders. Two Peale portraits can be seen at the Columbia SC Museum of Art - a portrait of Washington and one of William Fitzsimmons, grandfather of South Carolina’s Wade Hampton III.

 Jefferson, the superbly educated Virginia lawyer, followed the political path, House of Burgesses, Continental Congress, Governor of Virginia, Ambassador to France, Secretary of State, VP and two term President.

They were friends who shared natural history, science, exploration and the future. Both fiddlers (well only Jefferson the violin kind), they invented numerous mechanical wonders – farm equipment, “moving pictures”, decoders, ladders, bookstands and collaborated on perfecting the polygraph - a dual pen device whose rights were owned by CW Peale.

Both were avid Natural Scientists. In 1786 CW Peale, a self trained taxidermist, founded the first US Museum of Natural History. In 1801 he organized the first US scientific expedition – to excavate giant Mastodon bones discovered in upstate NY. Jefferson was President and at a time even fossils had a political significance. Europe scoffed at America as a degenerate world of small and weak animals. Everyone – Washington, Franklin and Jefferson included – bragged Peale’s American Mastodon bones proved American superiority – and that there were more where they came from. These very bones may have set Jefferson to commission the Lewis & Clark Expedition many of whose artifacts were later given to Peale’s Museum.

Jefferson and Peale both retired in 1810 - Jefferson to Monticello in Virginia and Peale to Belfield in Maryland. For 17 years they experimented with farming and inventions, and exchanged ideas in a lengthy correspondence between respected friends.