Portrait of Colonel Thomas Harris, watercolor, signed I.P. dated 1802, in gold oval frame, the gentleman in white cravat and brown jacket, the obverse with a lock of hair and a seed pearl, with a gilt scroll monogram on guilloche and iridescent glass, with cobalt glass border, in partial leather and velvet fitted case 2.75 x 2.25 in. Condition: Glass cracked with losses to cobalt glass on obverse, secured with tape at edges, monogram elements loose inside glass. Vertical fine crack to miniature to right near signature and shoulder of subject. Other small scratches in the facial area radiating down vertically from the head toward the bust. There is a looping scratch from the left side (as viewing) across the nose and ending over the right side shoulder. The tape on the front of the frame seems to suggest this could have been out of the frame at some points and suffered some wear. The fitted leather case is worn and damaged. It is identical to the case on the next lot, which contains a portrait of Harris's wife, Ann Gwinn Harris. James Peale painted more than 200 watercolor miniatures in his lifetime. Born in Annapolis Maryland, he served in the American Revolutionary War. Upon returning in 1779 he joined his older brother Charles Wilson Peale in his painting studio in Philadelphia. His military service led to military portrait commissions and he increasingly established a reputation as a painter of portrait miniatures. Typical of his style in terms of the portrait miniature is the employment of long diagonal strokes in the background and smaller linear strokes in the figure. In 1820 his eyesight was failing and unfortunately also his career as a miniaturist. Provenance: The present lot is descended directly in the family of Colonel Thomas Harris, who with his wife, Ann Gwinn Harris (see next lot- 126) was a resident of Annapolis Maryland.