A granddaughter of Charles Willson Peale, Anna Peale Sellers grew up in Philadelphia, surrounded by the artists of the Peale family. She studied in Rome during the 1860s and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1876, 1877, and 1882 (in that year Thomas Eakins, whose instruction was based on close study of the nude figure, was promoted from “Professor” to “Director” of the Academy). In her fifties when she first attended the Academy, Sellers was “shocked to discover that women students drew from the nude female and nearly nude male figure” (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Pennsylvania Academy and Its Women, p. 31). She exhibited at the Academy in 1866, 1877, and 1878. Her paintings are in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore.