Sarah Peale, the daughter of James Peale, and niece of Charles Willson Peale, was one of the first American women to achieve professional success and recognition as an artist. Her cousin Rembrandt Peale, with whom she studied in Baltimore in 1818, 1820, and 1822, influenced her painting style and subject matter. She became well-known as a portrait painter in Baltimore where she lived from 1822 to 1947, occasionally traveling to Washington, D.C. where she attended sessions of Congress. She painted many public figures of the period.

She exhibited at the Peale Museum annually beginning in 1822. In 1824 both Sarah and her sister Anna were elected to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the first women given such recognition. Sarah and Anna painted jointly in the early 1820s in Baltimore, with Sarah painting oils and Anna miniatures, though they gave up the practice by the mid-1820s. In 1847 Sarah moved to Saint Louis, where she painted and taught until 1878, when she returned to Philadelphia to live with her sisters Anna and Margaretta.