Peter Grain (artist)

Born in France,[1] Grain was originally a performer and playwright with the Circus of Pépin and Breschard,[2] a company which toured the United States from 1807 until 1815.

[4] Grain's earliest recognition as a painter occurred in Maryland in 1815, where he created a setting for The Hero of the North; or, The Deliverer of His Country performed by an amateur company in Washington, D.C.

[1] In 1823 Grain's Picture of the Shipwreck of the Packet Albion, portraying the loss of the New York and Liverpool Line Ship Albion, on the Coast of Ireland in April, 1822, on 120 feet of canvas, was viewed by the public in Charleston, South Carolina[5] He was employed by Henry Hanington, dioramist (panorama painter), in 1836.

[1] The Grain name was used as the principal painter in Charles Kean's revivals of Shakespeare's Richard III (1845), and The Life and Death of King John (1846).

[5][6] While on its national tour, the moving panorama made a stop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where "an astonished village looked at it for twenty-five cents a head.

[8] Grain is mentioned in the National Gallery of Art provenance of a portrait by Gilbert Stuart, The Circus Rider.

Peter Jr. was based at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, built by the Circus of Pépin and Breschard in 1809[10] for most of his career.