Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980) was a noted historian of early America, best known for his numerous works on the life and artistic production of the family of his own great-grandfather, Charles Willson Peale. Born in Overbrook, Pa., in 1903, Sellers attended Haverford College (1925) and Harvard (MA 1926), before taking a position as librarian at Wesleyan College (1937-1949) and, later, Dickinson College (1956-1968). For several years in the late 1940s, Sellers worked at the American Philosophical Society as Research Associate.

Sellers's numerous books and articles focused largely on the voluminous artistic output of the Peale family and on the Peale Museum, an important site in the early Republic for presenting natural history to the general public. Sellers also conducted research on Benjamin Franklin and others among the Peales' contemporaries. He was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1970 for his work on Peale and was elected to membership in the APS in 1979. He died in 1980 while on a visit to Australia.

The Sellers Collection consists of the working file of the historian, Charles Coleman Sellers, pertaining to his research on the artistic oevre of Charles Willson Peale and his family. The Collection is organized in seven series, corresponding roughly to Sellers's publications on the subject, plus a series containing general notes on other contemporary artists and a small miscellaneous correspondence file.

Native American Images Note : Reprinted black and white photographs from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard of Native American artifacts once held by Charles Willson Peale's Philadelphia Museum. Some of the items include Plains and Northwestern Indian utensils, clothes and canoes of the early 1800s. Of note, Thomas Jefferson's Indian collection including a peace pipe, a painted buffalo robe, Cree Indian dresses and an Indian hunting shirt worn by Captain Cook. Some later dated images, ca. 1840s, depict native Hawaiian and Caribbean objects. Primarily housed in Series II.

Restrictions

Photographs of portraits owned privately or owned by other institutions can not be reproduced.

Provenance

Gift of the estate of Charles Coleman Sellers, 1980 (accession number 1980-276ms).

Preferred citation

Cite as: Charles Coleman Sellers Collection, American Philosophical Society.

Related material

Several collections of papers pertaining to the Peale Family are housed at the APS, and these have been issued as a microfiche set, Lillian B. Miller, ed., The Collected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Microform, 1980).

There is a Sellers collection at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., primarily personal in nature.

Bibliography

• Peale family

• Gelatin silver prints
• Photographs

• Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916
• Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
• Healy, George Peter Alexander, 1813-1894
• Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826
• Peale, Anna Claypoole, 1791-1878
• Peale, Charles Willson, 1741-1827
• Peale, James,1749-1831.
• Peale, Mary Jane, 1827-1902
• Peale, Raphaelle, 1774-1825
• Peale, Rembrandt, 1778-1860
• Peale, Rubens, 1784-1865
• Peale, Sarah Miriam, 1800-1885
• Pine, Robert Edge, 1730?-1788
• Rush, William, 1756-1833
• Sellers, Charles Coleman, 1903-1980
• Sully, Thomas, 1783-1872
• West, Benjamin, 1738-1820
• Whistler, James McNeill, 1834-1903

• Anishinaabe
• Art
• Artists
• Comanche Indians
• Cree Indians
• Crow Indians
• Dakota Indians
• Indians of North America -- Great Lakes (North America)
• Indians of North America -- Oklahoma
• Indians of North America -- Pacific Coast
• Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806)
• Mandan Indians
• Northwest Coast Indians
• Ojibwa Indians
• Ojibwe people
• Painters -- United States
• Plains Indians
• Tlingit Indians
• Washington, George, 1732-1799 -- Portraits, caricatures, etc