Single Earring Belonging to Amelia Margaret Peel
Datec. 1881
Dimensions1.4 x 5.5 cm
Credit LineAnonymous Donation, 2012.
Object number2012.006.009
Label TextThis earring belonged to Amelia Peel, artist Paul Peel’s mother. Amelia Margaret Hall (b. London, UK, 1 May 1833 – d. London, ON, 4 October 1890) married John Robert Peele (later Peel) (b. London, UK, 24 September 1830 – d. London, ON, 9 July 1904) in London, England on 30 September 1849. They soon immigrated to America, settling in Philadelphia early in 1851. According to family sources, the couple’s loyalty to the United Kingdom encouraged them to relocate to Canada soon after, where they settled in London, Ontario in October of 1852. Having apprenticed as a stone carver and marble cutter, Peel found work in the field and by the early 1860s had established his own business at 493 Richmond Street. As early as 1864, Peel had begun to give drawing lessons at the back of his marble works, and continued to be an active member of the burgeoning art community in London. By the 1870s he was a member of the management committee of the Mechanics Institute and Museum, was at the centre of the activities of the Western School of Art and Design, where he was also a teacher, and with the art exhibitions of the Western Fair. The Peels raised a large family and the couple encouraged their children to pursue an interest in art and art making. Peel himself was an early teacher to his children and through his activities with Western Art Society.
Among the children, middle son Paul Peel went to have a distinguished art career. Like his siblings, Paul received his early art training from his father and later studied in London from 1875 to 1877 under acclaimed landscape and portrait artist William Lees Judson. In July of 1877 Peel accompanied Judson on a sketching trip down the Thames River, which later became the source for Judson’s Kuhleborn: A Tour of the Thames (published 1880). In the fall of 1877, Peel moved to Philadelphia, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under noted artists Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and Christian Schussele (1824-1879). In 1881 he joined the American colony of artists at Pont Aven, France. Peel spent much of the next dozen years in Paris, attracted by its superior art schools and opportunities for exhibiting. During this time he received instruction from artist Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Académie Julian with artists Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant (1845-1902), Henri Doucet (1856-1922) and Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911). While in France, he met a young Danish painter, Isaure Fanchette Verdier to whom he was married in 1886. The couple had two children: Robert André (1886-1956) and Emilie Marguerite (1888-1959).
During his career Paul Peel travelled widely in Canada and in Europe, exhibiting as a member of the Ontario Society of Artists (elected 1880 at the age of 20) and the Royal Canadian Academy (associate member 1881, full member 1890). He won a bronze medal in 1890 (at the age of 30) at the Paris Salon for his work After the Bath, making him one of the first Canadian artists to receive international recognition in his lifetime. Known for his often sentimental nudes and for his paintings of children (often his own), he was among the first Canadian painters to explore the nude as a subject. He contracted a lung infection in September and died on 3 October 1892 at the age of 32.
NameEarring
