Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
The Painter's Chair (35 page)
Thanks to his own deeds, to the remembrances published by Wash Custis, and to the explosion of interest produced by the visit
of Lafayette, “the Friend of Washington,” new generations too young to recall the Revolution were introduced to the General.
The stolid, determined, rugged, dogged man the painters recorded has endured because of what he accomplished, and also because
of what he didn’t do. Unlike the others he rarely stooped to political bickering. A man of stature in more ways than one,
he always tried to look over other people’s heads at the horizon, to a time down the road when the distractions of the moment
blurred and a larger vision emerged.
Washington became the paradigm of the Founding Father, more than Jefferson or Adams or Hamilton or any of the rest. None of
the others had the unimpeachable mix of gravitas, selflessness, and implied power. In the age before photography he left no
negative legacy; he was, as his friend Eliza Willing Powel told him, “the only man in America that dares to do right on all
public occasions.”
25
The Washington we know today, through his words, the testimony of others, and in the pictures the painters made of him, offers
proof positive of his instinctive, pragmatic, and quintessentially American character. He was also a man who always agreed,
admittedly with an air of resignation, to sit for yet another portrait.
T
HE TASK OF looking at historic portraiture involves trying to insinuate oneself into a series of two-dimensional likenesses.
Mime-like, I have tried to enter the picture spaces created by Messrs. Trumbull, Stuart, Peale, and the rest, and to push
the boundaries in such a way that I could better glimpse the other man in the frame, George Washington.
This book is the result of those efforts. My research has taken me to the artists’ Painting Rooms, as best I could reconstruct
them in my mind. My own two feet, together with Amtrak and an automobile, have delivered me to many museum galleries to see
the art these artists made as they measured and mused upon their common sitter. An understanding of the past is just that:
One view, one appreciation, one set of perceptions. We cannot truly
know
a historic personage. But writing a book like this is about glimpses, about assemblages, about assuming other people’s points
of view long enough to triangulate a new understanding—and many conversations, directives, and advice along the way helped
me in my pursuit. Among those to whom I owe debts are James C. Rees, Jennifer Kittlaus, Dawn Bonner, and Christine Messing
at the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association; Jennifer Tonkovich and Sylvia Merian at the Morgan Library; Carrie Rebora Barratt
and Catherine Scandalis at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Charles Greifenstein at the American Philosophical Society; Peggy
Baker at the Pilgrim Hall Museum; Robert Harmon at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Wendy Kail at Tudor Place Historic
House and Garden; and the staffs at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Boston Athenaeum, the Sawyer Library
at Williams College, the Chatham Public Library, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Mid-Hudson
Library System, and C/W MARS, the central and western Massachusetts library system.
My particular thanks go to Peter Ginna, publisher, and Katie Henderson, editor, at Bloomsbury Press for lending their unerring
ears and insightful eyes to the manuscript; Gillian Blake, who, at the outset, asked the key question (“What do the painters
have in common?”); my friend and agent Gail Hochman, always ready with her good spirit and critical acumen; Kathleen Moloney
for her humor, kindness, and patience with my grammatical lapses; Jean Atcheson for her close and literate scrutiny of the
manuscript; Greg Villepique for readying the book for the press; Sara Stemen for a design that feels of a piece with the General’s
era; and Peter Miller and Jason Bennett for their work in alerting the world to the presence of this book. Special thanks,
as well, go to Mary V. Thompson at Mount Vernon, for sharing her deep and affectionate knowledge of the Washingtons and their
home.
Finally, I must thank the women with whom I share my daily life: my wife Betsy, whose engagement with the past has helped
shape my thinking; our daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, for their patience with my dinner-table tales; and to the living spirit
of my late mother, Ann D. Howard, who first gave me entrée to the world of the American past.
PROLOGUE:
An Accidental Gallery
1
. John Neal,
Randolph, A Novel
(1823), reprinted in
Observations on American Art,
Harold Edward Dickson (State College: Pennsylvania State College, 1943).
2
. George Washington,
Diaries,
February 22, 1799.
3
. George Washington Parke Custis,
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington by His Adopted Son George Washington Parke Custis
(1860), pp. 527–28.
4
. Quoted in William S. Baker,
Character Portraits of Washington
(1887), p. 320.
5
. George Washington to Wakelin Welch and son, August 16, 1789.
6
. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz,
Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels through America in 1797–1799, 1805 with some further account of life in New Jersey
(1965), p. 96.
7
. Tobias Lear, “The last illness and Death of General Washington,” reprinted in
The Papers of George Washington,
Dorothy Twohig, ed.,
Retirement Series,
vol. 4, p. 547.
8
. Lear, “last illness,” p. 550.
9
. George Washington,
Last Will and Testament,
reprinted in
The Papers of George Washington,
Dorothy Twohig, ed.,
Retirement Series
, vol. 4, pp. 479–92.
10
. Lear, “last illness,” pp. 550–51.
CHAPTER1:
John Smibert’s Shade
1
. Stuart P. Feld, “In the Latest London Manner” (1963), p. 297.
2
. George Vertue, quoted in Feld, “London Manner” (1963), p. 296.
3
. Horace Walpole, quoted in John Marshall Phillips, “The Smibert Tradition” (1949), p.ii.
4
. Henry Wilder Foote,
John Smibert, Painter
(1950), pp. 53–58.
5
. Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), p. 55.
6
.
Boston News-Letter,
April 2, 1751.
7
. Saunders,
John Smibert
(1995), p. 255.
8
. Ibid., p. 100.
9
. The source for much of this is also the source that proved to be essential to many early American painters, Robert Dossie’s
The Handmaid to the Arts
(1758), a reference for artisans that was updated and republished often in the late eighteenth century.
10. Saunders,
John Smibert
(1995), p. 263.
11
. Ibid., p. 102.
12
. Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), pp. 90ff.
13
.
Boston Gazette,
July 12, 1748.
14
.
Boston News-Letter
, April 4, 1751.
15
. John Singleton Copley to John Greenwood, January 25, 1771.
16
. John Singleton Copley to Henry Pelham, March 14, 1774.
17
. William Dunlap,
History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States
(1834), vol. I, p. 104.
18
. Charles Willson Peale,
Diary
in
The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family
(1983), vol. I, p. 39.
19
. Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), p. 123.
20
. Charles Willson Peale,
The Autobiography of Charles Willson Peale,
in
Selected Papers,
vol. V, (2000), p. 23.
21
. John Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 44.
22
. Ibid., p. 45.
23
. Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), p. 256.
24
. Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), p. 126.
25
. John Smibert,
The Notebook of John Smibert
(1969), p. 10; and Foote,
John Smibert
(1950), p. 41, fns. 17 and 47.
26
. Smibert’s
The Bermuda Group
will reappear later as the source for Edward Savage’s
The Washington Family.
See Chapter 7, page 140.
CHAPTER2:
The First Likeness
1
. George Washington to the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, May 21, 1772.
2
. George Washington,
Diaries,
May 20, 1772.
3
.
Maryland Gazette,
January 21, 1762.
4
. Peale,
Autobiography,
p. 14.
5
. Ibid., pp. 16–17.
6
. George Washington to Jonathan Boucher, May 21, 1772.
7
. John Laurens,
The Army Correspondence of Col. John Laurens
(1867), p. 138.
8
. Custis,
Recollections
(1860), p. 484.
9
. Peale,
Papers,
vol. I, pp. 141–43.
10
. Custis,
Recollections
(1860), p. 519. There is some difference of opinion as to whether this transpired, as reported by Washington’s step-grandson
Wash Custis, in 1772 or in early 1774.
11
. George Washington to Jonathan Boucher, May 21, 1772.
12
. James Thomas Flexner,
George Washington and the New Nation, 1783–1793
(1970), p. 89.
13
. Charles Willson Peale to Edmond Jenings, August 29, 1775.
14
. George Washington to Burwell Bassett, June 20, 1773.
CHAPTER3:
The General
1
. Charles Willson Peale to Edmond Jenings, August 29, 1775.
2
. Peale,
Diary
, November 11, 1775, p. 155.
3
. Flexner,
George Washington
(1970), p. 335.
4
. Douglas Southall Freeman,
George Washington
, vol. III, p. 426.
5
. John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 29, 1775.
6
. Washington,
Papers, Revolutionary War Series
, vol. I, pp. 3–4.
7
. John Adams,
The Works of John Adams
, vol. II, p. 417.
8
.
Journals of the Continental Congress,
vol. II, p. 91.
9
. Washington,
Papers, Revolutionary War Series
, vol. I, p. 1.
10
. George Washington to Martha Washington, June 18, 1775.
11
. Charles Coleman Sellers,
Portraits and Miniatures
(1952), p. 230.
12
. Wendy C. Wick,
George Washington, An American Icon
(1982), pp. 9–13.
13
. Jules David Prown,
John Singleton Copley
(1966), vol. I, fig. 95.
14
. The word “limner,” from “illuminate” meaning to embellish manuscripts, was synonymous at the time with “portraitist”;
only later did it come to be applied to self-taught and, by then, old-fashioned itinerant artists. Peale,
Papers
, vol. I, pp. 45–46.
15
. Robert C. Alberts,
Benjamin West: A Biography
(1978), p. 77.
16
. Peale,
Papers,
vol. V, p. 32.
17
. William Dunlap,
Diary, 1766–1823
(1930), pp. 542–43.
18
. John Galt,
Life of Benjamin West
(1816–1820), vol. 2, p. 17.
19
. Peale,
Autobiography
,
Papers
, vol. V, page 34.
20
. Ibid.
21
. Sellers,
Peale
(1969), p. 74; and Sellers,
Peale
(1947), vol. I, p. 88.
22
. Peale,
Papers
vol. I, p. 189. The document known as the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted two days later and signed on August
2.
23
. Peale,
Diary. Papers,
vol. I, p. 209.
24
. Peale,
Autobiography,
p. 50.
25
. For a richly detailed and learned study of the crossing and the subsequent battles at Trenton and Princeton, see David
Hackett Fischer’s
Washington’s Crossing
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
26
. Washington,
Papers
,
Revolutionary War Series
, vol. VII, pp. 449–50.
27
. Peale,
Diary,
January 2–3, 1776.
28
. Peale,
Autobiography,
p. 53.
29
. Resolution of Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, January 18, 1779.
30
. John Hill Morgan and Mantle Fielding,
The Life Portraits of Washington and Their Replicas
(1931), p. 15.
31
. Charles Willson Peale to William Carmichael, October 1779.
32
. Charles Willson Peale to Edmond Jenings, October 15, 1779.
33
. Johann Joachim Winckelmann,
Writings on Art
(1972), pp. 72, 113.
34
. Simon Schama,
Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations)
(1991), pp. 26–27.
35
. Peale,
Diary,
pp. 304–305.
36
. Paul Leicester Ford,
The True George Washington
(1896), p. 195.
37
. Sergeant R_____, “The Battle of Princeton.” Wellsborough, Pa.,
Phenix
(24 March 1832); as reprinted in the
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,
vol. XXIX (1896), pp. 515–19.
38
. For a more detailed discussion of Peale’s Museum, see Joseph J. Ellis,
After the Revolution: Profiles in American Culture
(New York: W.W. Norton &Co., 1979), pp. 40–71; and Sidney Hart and David C. Ward, “The Waning of an Enlightenment Ideal,”
in
New Perspectives on Charles Willson Peale,
Lillian B. Miller and David C. Ward, eds. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), pp. 219–35.
39
. Peale,
Autobiography. Papers
, vol V., p. 53.
CHAPTER 4:
John Trumbull Takes His Turn
1
. Quoted in Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. I, p. 351.
2
. Much of the story of Trumbull’s incarceration comes from his own account in his
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), pp. 63–72.
3
.
The Remembrancer,
vol. I, pt. 2 (1780), pp. 277–79.
4
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), pp. 22–23.
5
. Ibid., p. 24.
6
. Ibid., p. 44.
7
. Dunlap,
History
(1834), vol. II, p. 178.
8
. William Dunlap,
Diary, 1766–1823
(1930), p. 543.
9
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 61.
10
. Ibid., p. 11.
11
. Ibid., p. 11, fn. 30.
12
. Ibid., pp. 52, 53.
13
. Ibid., p. 62.
14
. John Trumbull to James Thatcher, quoted in Carrie Rebora and Ellen G. Miles,
Gilbert Stuart
(2004), p. 307.
15
. Quoted in Lewis Einstein,
Divided Loyalties
(1933, 1970), p. 373.
16
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 73, fn. 47; and Charles Allen Munn,
Three Types of Washington Portraits
(1908), p. 5.
17
. Oswaldo Rodriguez Rocque in “Trumbull’s Portraits,” in
John Trumbull: The Hand and Spirit of a Painter
(1975), Helen A. Cooper, ed., p. 96.
18
. Wick,
George Washington
(1982), pp. 26–28.
19
. Alberts,
Benjamin West
(1978), page 136.
20
. Trumbull,
Autobiography
(1841, 1953), p. 81.
CHAPTER 5:
“The Finest Statuary of the World”
1
. Anne L. Poulet,
Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment
(2003), p. 24, fn. 80.
2
.
Resolution of the General Assembly of Virginia
, June 22, 1784.
3
. Thomas Jefferson to Governor Benjamin Harrison, January 20, 1785.
4
. Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, December 10, 1784.
5
. Charles Henry Hart and Edward Biddle,
Memoirs of the Life and Works of Jean-Antoine Houdon
(1911), pp. 184–85.
6
. Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Harrison, January 12, 1785.
7
. Hart and Biddle,
Memoirs
(1911), pp. 187–88.
8
. Alfred Owen Aldridge,
Benjamin Franklin: Philosopher and Man
(1965), p. 386.
9
. Hart and Biddle,
Memoirs
(1911), p. 75.
10
. Aldridge,
Benjamin Franklin
(1965), p. 374; and Jeanne L. Wasserman, ed.
Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture
(1975), p. 61.
11
. George Washington to Jean-Antoine Houdon, September 26, 1785.
12
. Washington,
Diaries,
October 2, 1785.
13
. Washington to Lafayette, February 1, 1784.
14
. Washington,
Diaries
, October 6, 1785.
15
. Ibid., October 10, 1785.
16
. Letter of Eleanor Parke Lewis (Nelly Custis) to George Washington Parke Custis, quoted in “Genesis of a Portrait,” in
The Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, Annual Report
, (1967), pp. 11–12.
