George Washington Street Art George Washington Portrait Black and White

When Gilbert Stuart put brush to canvas during George Washington's presidency, he painted the epitome well-nigh recognized today.

Stuart wanted to paint Washington, for he expected that he could make a "fortune" on images of the Revolutionary War hero and American leader. At the time the president sat for Stuart, the artist patently tried to relax his sitter, offering, "At present, sir, you must allow me forget that y'all are Full general Washington and that I am Stuart, the painter," to which the president responded, "Mr. Stuart demand never feel the need for forgetting who he is and who General Washington is." After Stuart's initial portrait of Washington, he fabricated more than one hundred copies for American and European patrons eager to own an image of the illustrious sitter. They were of three types: a waist-length Vaughan version showing the right side of Washington's face; an Archives variant displaying the left side; and a full-length Landsdowne example. The artist promised to give Martha Washington the original canvas of the Athenaeum portrait used to make the copies simply unfortunately never kept his word.

This Athenaeum-type portrait was purchased from Stuart by George Beck, a landscape creative person whom Washington patronized, for Major Alexander Parker of Lexington, Kentucky. The sail shows Washington dressed in a black velvet suit with a white lace jabot at his neck, and his powdered hair pulled dorsum into a queue ornamented by a sawtoothed ribbon rosette. His lips appear swollen and his rima oris uncomfortable, owing to a new fix of ill-plumbing fixtures dentures. For a person conscious of the impression made by his outward appearance, it would likely displease our nation's showtime president to know that the likeness taken at a moment of' discomfort would get the best known. Indeed, the paradigm was widely circulated through Stuart'south copies also as by painters, engravers, and lithographers who copied the original piece of work. Stuart'south painting became, and remains, "the household Washington of the world."

Following the success of Gilbert Stuart'southward 1795 portrait of George Washington, Martha Washington convinced her married man to sit again to the artist in 1796, for a pair of portraits of the couple. Though Mrs. Washington implored Stuart on numerous occasions to send the portraits (now known as the Athenaeum portraits) to them, he never did. Instead, the painter left the life works unfinished, and used them as the source for numerous copies. There are approximately 75 then-called "Athenaeum-type" portraits of George Washington. Though each version is clearly based on the one source, eventually endemic by the Boston Athenaeum (now jointly owned by The National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), the individual works ofttimes take distinct appearances, with variations in costume and/or background.

Mount Vernon'southward Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington has long been considered among the finest of these "replicas". Stuart's student Matthew Jouett reportedly declared it "one of Stuart's best copies of his great portrait," and its authenticity and quality were attested to in 1804 by two other artists in 1804—the English landscape painter George Beck and the miniature portrait painter Benjamin Trott. Beck's paintings of the Potomac River were purchased by George Washington in 1797 and now hang at Mountain Vernon; Trott was one of Stuart'southward pupils.

While Stuart never finalized the costume in the Archives portrait, his completed paintings vary in their approach to costume. A small grouping of works from the belatedly 1790s contain lace shirt ruffles, while later on examples often simplify them. The extremely finely painted shirt ruffle in Mountain Vernon's example is comparable to the 1797 case at the Huntington Library. By 1803, Stuart was more typically simplifying the shirt ruffle. Stuart biographer Charles Mount, who viewed Mount Vernon's portrait (H-iv) in 1977, described it every bit a "true likeness," and suggested it was likely painted around the fourth dimension of the Yale University Art Gallery portrait. The Yale work, which is currently dated 1796-1805, also shares with H-iv a very finely painted shirt ruffle of lace.

The delicacy of impact in the shirt ruffle here is counterpointed by the very loose and painterly approach to the powdered hair, in shades of cream and grayness. The coloration and painting of the hair is not unique, only is seen in many of Stuart's works of both Washington and other sitters. Also typical of Stuart is the range of broadly painted mankind tones—rosy pink for cheeks and lips, darkening around the rima oris for a five o'clock shadow, and the clever highlights at nose and forehead to suggest calorie-free. The facial structure conveyed in Mountain Vernon's and other Stuart portraits of Washington is hitting. The most prominent attribute of the Athenaeum portraits—and that which has been frequently discussed in relation to the works—is the visible swelling and discomfort around the rima oris. As documented by Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, before the sitting, the President had a new fix of dentures "of Body of water equus caballus (hippopotamus) ivory teeth. These, but made, were besides large and clumsy, and gave that peculiar appearance of the mouth seen in Stuart'southward picture."

There has been niggling commentary regarding Stuart'southward characterization of Washington's eyes, which here and in other Archives portraits are fix very deeply in their sockets, actualization virtually hooded, and set off past the dramatic line of the olfactory organ. Interestingly, in H-4, as in Adolf Wertmuller'southward portraits of Washington of 1794 and 1795, the pupils of the optics appear somewhat flattened or ovoid rather than round. Isaac Weld, in his Travels Through the States of Northward America, and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, indicated that Stuart told him "that there are features in his [George Washington'southward] confront totally different from what he ever observed in that of whatever other human existence; the sockets for the eyes, for case, are larger than what he always met with before, and the upper office of the nose broader."

Excerpt from The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon past Carol Cadou

Provenance:

The artist, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Philadelphia, PA; Purchased by George Beck (1748-1812), Philadelphia, PA and Lexington, KY; Purchased by at least 1812 by Major Alexander Parker, Lexington, KY (d. c. 1825); Purchased c. 1825 at public auction of Major Parker's furnishings, by William Richardson (d. 1863), Lexington and Louisville, KY; Purchased by his daughter, Caroline H. R. Richardson, Louisville, KY by 1863; Presented to the MVLA past Mrs. Richardson's sister Ida Slocomb Richardson [Mrs. Tobias Gibson Richardson], (d. 1910), Vice Regent for Louisiana, 1904.

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Source: https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/artwork/george-washington-portrait-by-gilbert-stuart/

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