Although the details of Robert Field's early career in England are obscure, it is known that he received his early training at the Royal Academy schools, London, in 1790. In 1794 he moved to the United States as part of the influx of British artists and craftsmen enticed by the prosperity of the new republic. After settling briefly in Baltimore, Maryland,, he took up residence in the nation's capital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There he immediately joined a group of artists led by Charles Willson Peale, the noted painter and naturalist, in establishing the Columbianum, or American Academy of the Fine Arts, an organization whose plan, according to Field, was "the most enlarged, liberal and grand of any in the wor...