The Painter's Chair Read online

  THE PAINTER’S CHAIR

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Houses of the Founding Fathers

  Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson

  Thomas Jefferson, Architect

  House-Dreams

  The Preservationist’s Progress

  THE PAINTER’S CHAIR

  George Washington and the Making of American Art

  HUGH HOWARD

  Copyright © 2009 by Hugh Howard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Bloomsbury Press, New York

  All papers used by Bloomsbury Press are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Howard, Hugh, 1952–

  The painter’s chair : George Washington and the making of American art / by Hugh Howard.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-1-60819-191-8

  1. Washington, George, 1732–1799—Portraits. 2. Portrait painting, American—18th century. I. Title.

  N7628.W3H42 2009

  757'.3097309033—dc22

  2008028228

  First U.S. Edition 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Designed by Sara Stemen

  Typeset by Westchester Book Group

  Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

  To Denise Levertov,

  Ivan Galantic,

  and G. Carter Wilson,

  three teachers who

  encouraged

  a young writer

  “I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters pencil,

  that I am now altogether at their beck . . . no dray

  moves more readily to the Thill, than I do to the Painters Chair.”

  —George Washington,

  writing to Francis Hopkinson,

  May 16, 1785

  AUTHOR’ S NOTE

  ONE VERSION OF America’s most famous painting costs only a dollar. In fact, it is a dollar. Go ahead, reach into your wallet and pull out a Washington. Within the oval frame on the obverse, as they say in the world of currency, a face looks back at you. Obviously, it is the face of our first president. Less obviously, it is a 1796 rendering of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart.

  From today’s vantage, the eighteenth century seems a small place. As thirteen coastal colonies became a republic, the political power remained in the hands of just dozens of individuals. Like the balls on a billiard table, this finite number of men, along with the women who influenced them, repeatedly collided. The ricochet patterns that emerged shaped American society, government, and economics for everyone else.

  Despite the kinetic energy of the era, its central figure maintained an awesome stillness. George Washington’s decisive presence first bowled over the “invincible” British army; later, as the Confederation threatened to spin off in all directions, the General’s sheer gravitas was the unifying force that made possible the establishment of the constitutional union. Still later, as fractious political parties emerged during his presidency, Washington proved to be a long-legged colossus capable of straddling the two camps, somehow managing to remain largely above the fray but able to corral and contain the combatants.

  In the country house that was American culture in the second half of the eighteenth century, the art of the time was just as Washington-centric. The revolutionary era saw the emergence of the first American high-art painters. More sophisticated than the earlier limners, these young colonials had not only a native skill at drawing but also a learned appreciation for larger artistic currents. In journeys abroad, they were exposed to great art in the western tradition—works by van Dyck, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens—as well as contemporary English portraiture and history painting. Such men as Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), John Trumbull (1756–1843), and Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) returned to America from foreign travels with an understanding of aesthetic theory.

  This book observes Washington in their company. The conceit is simple: Seeing him through their eyes is like being in his presence during the nearly three decades he was a national figure. While looking at the artists who made likenesses of him from life, we will examine the lives of the painters. Just as they studied their most famous sitter, we will observe them in their quest to establish painting in America as both worthy of its Eu rope an antecedents yet different and uniquely American.

  Every detail in this book is drawn from a historic source. I have added no clouds to the sky nor a single side chair to any drawing room that was not said to have been there. Even so, not every piece of information is beyond dispute. For example, among art historians healthy debates continue to rage about the first Stuart portrait of Washington, which years later he claimed he had “rubbed out.” Did he destroy that canvas, or does it survive, overpainted, as the so-called Vaughan Portrait in the National Gallery? Charles Willson Peale was known to contradict himself in his writings, recollecting details in his Autobiography differently from the way he recorded them in his diary decades earlier. Whom should we believe and which is correct?

  I have studied the sundry accounts and assembled a narrative that I believe to be true. In acquainting myself with the documentary, visual, architectural, and other evidence at hand, I made many new eighteenth-century friends. Their paintings and experiences offer a composite view of Washington. My hope is that The Painter’s Chair will put a richer, deeper, more colorful, and more recognizably human expression on the austere countenance looking out at us from that one-dollar bill.

  HUGH HOWARD

  Hayes Hill, New York

  CONTENTS

  The Players

  A Washington Timeline

  PROLOGUE

  AN ACCIDENTAL GALLERY

  CHAPTER 1.

  JOHN SMIBERT’S SHADE

  CHAPTER 2.

  THE FIRST LIKENESS

  CHAPTER 3.

  THE GENERAL

  CHAPTER 4.

  JOHN TRUMBULL TAKES HIS TURN

  CHAPTER 5.

  “THE FINEST STATUARY OF THE WORLD”

  CHAPTER 6.

  THREE FRIENDS OF MR. TRUMBULL

  CHAPTER 7.

  “THE WASHINGTON FAMILY”

  CHAPTER 8.

  STUART SLOUCHES TOWARD PHILADELPHIA

  CHAPTER 9.

  A PLURALITY OF PORTRAITS

  CHAPTER 10.

  REMBRANDT’S WASHINGTON

  EPILOGUE

  REMEMBERING THE FOUNDING FATHER

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  THE PLAYERS

  (In order of appearance)

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY

  George Washington (1732–1799)

  General and President, retired

  Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (1731–1802)

  George Washington’s wife of forty years

  Tobias Lear (1762–1816)

  Secretary and friend to the General

  Eleanor (“Nelly”) Parke Custis Lewis (1779–1852)

  Martha’s granddaughter

  George Washington (“Wash”) Parke Custis (1781–1857)

  Nelly’s brother and foster son of the General

  Dr. James Craik (1730–1814)

  Washington’s physician and friend since their service in the French and Indian War

  William Lee (ca. 1751–182
8)

  Washington’s body servant and, despite his slave status, one of the General’s most trusted war time companions

  The Marquis de Lafayette (later, General Lafayette) (1756–1834)

  Youthful French nobleman who arrived in America to support the Patriot cause

  THE ARTISTS

  John Smibert (1688–1751)

  A London-trained painter new to America

  John Singleton Copley (1738–1815)

  The teenage son of a Boston tobacconist

  Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827)

  A Mary land painter fleeing his creditors

  Colonel John Trumbull (1756–1843)

  A struggling painter, recently resigned from General Washington’s army

  Benjamin West (1738–1820)

  Pennsylvania-born painter and confidant of King George III

  Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828)

  Expatriate painter at work in the Painting Rooms of Mr. West

  Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828)

  The world-renowned French sculptor

  Edward Savage (1761–1817)

  An aspiring New England limner come to New York to make his fortune

  Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860)

  The seventeen-year-old portraitist son of Charles Willson Peale

  OTHER FEATURED PLAYERS

  George Berkeley (1685–1753) Dean of Derry

  Peter Pelham (ca. 1695–1751) Painter and engraver

  John Hesselius (1728–1778) Itinerant painter

  John Hancock (1737–1793) President of the Continental Congress

  John Adams (1735–1826) Delegate to the Continental Congress

  James Peale (1749–1831) Soldier in the Continental Army

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) President of the Royal Academy

  Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) Natural philosopher, minister to France

  Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) Minister to France

  Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) New York politician and businessman

  Abigail Adams (1744–1818) Wife of the minister to the Court of St. James’s

  Maria Cosway (1760–1838) Artist and visitor to Paris

  General Horatio Gates (ret.) (1727–1806) Comrade-in-arms of Washington

  Sarah Livingston Jay (1756–1802) Wife of John Jay and impatient patron of Mr. Stuart

  General Henry Lee (1756–1818) “Light Horse Harry,” confidant of General and Mrs. Washington

  Anne Willing Bingham (1764–1801) A leader of Philadelphia society

  A WASHINGTON TIMELINE

  PROLOGUE

  An Accidental Gallery

  If Washington should appear on earth, just as he sat to Stuart, I am sure that [he] would be treated as an imposter, when compared with Stuart’s likeness of him, unless he produced his credentials.

  —John Neal, Randolph (1823)1

  I.

  December 12, 1799 . . . The Mansion House . . . Mount Vernon, Virginia

  GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS late for dinner. This was not usual—like the crew on a well-disciplined ship, the Mount Vernon household normally ran as if on military time.

  On most days the General rose early, usually between four and five o’clock. He descended to his study, lit a fire, performed his toilet, and dressed before devoting quiet hours to reading and writing letters. He expected to sit to his breakfast promptly at seven, where he took tea (without cream), and ate corn cakes with butter and honey. He called them Indian cakes; they were his preference, in part, because they required little chewing by his balky dentures. Although he had given up hunting, he was still vigorous, taking plea sure in daily ten-, twelve-, or even fourteen-mile rides to survey his farms. This day had been no exception as he had ridden out at ten o’clock. Now, as the minutes ticked by, the accepted dinner hour of three o’clock had passed, and there was no sign of the General.

  Though the moon had been visible the evening before, a northeast wind delivered a cover of clouds during the night. In the early afternoon, several hours after the horseman departed, snow had begun to fall. The mercury continued to hover near the freezing mark (Washington on rising had noted the temperature was thirty-three degrees). From the windows of the Mansion House, Martha Washington—short, round, and businesslike in her movements—could see the snowflakes had given way to hail, then to a steady, cold rain. She knew her husband would be hungry and in a need of hot food on his return. The meal would be postponed until his arrival.

  Yesterday the Washingtons had entertained guests, including Lord Fairfax, a British peer and an old friend of the family. They had dined in the New Room, the large and grand dining room with its two-story ceiling. On this afternoon, however, with little more than family on hand (Tobias Lear, Washington’s trusted secretary, was at his desk, laboring on the General’s correspondence), a fire had been laid in the corner fireplace of the more intimate Small Dining Room. There the light from the flames reflected off the looking glass suspended between the two windows, illuminating the lacy decorations on the white plaster ceiling, brightening the brilliant verdigris of the walls. Like many of his contemporaries, Washington thought the color green relaxing. He termed it “grateful to the eye.”

  The delay was not so long. The General arrived shortly after the hour, and, met by Mr. Lear with the day’s correspondence, he advised his younger friend, a sea captain’s son from New Hampshire, that there would be no posting of letters this evening. The weather, he reported, was too bad to dispatch even a servant. Washington doffed his greatcoat, which was thoroughly wetted by the snow and rain, but assured Lear that he himself was dry. Without a change of dress, he proceeded to his repast, by the light of tall tapers that the servants had lit on learning of his return.

  When he joined Martha at the table, they became the second set of Washingtons in the dining room that day. Along with the aging Martha and George were likenesses of themselves, as recorded by artist Edward Savage. Mounted in the overmantel, in a varnished gilt frame sent to Washington by the artist himself, the copperplate engraving of the painting The Washington Family portrayed the uniformed general and Martha in her mobcap seated at another table, along with their two wards, Martha’s grandchildren, Eleanor Custis and George Washington Parke Custis (familiarly known as “Nelly” and “Wash”). The print offered a retrospective view—Savage had begun its composition ten years earlier, when Wash and Nelly were still children. Behind the family stands a slave resembling William Lee, Washington’s trusted manservant, waiting to serve. The engraving hung in a place of honor in the warm and intimate room.

  Although she was in residence at Mount Vernon, this night Nelly would not join the family at the table. Washington had helped raise his step-granddaughter from infancy, and only the previous February she had done him the honor of marrying in Mount Vernon’s parlor. She chose the nuptial day—it was Washington’s own birthday, the twenty-second— and she had taken her vows as the sun descended. “Miss Custis was married ab[out] Candle light,” wrote Washington in his diary, “to Mr. Law[rence] Lewis.”2The groom was his nephew, son of his sister Betty.

  In the months since, Nelly Custis Lewis and her husband had taken a wedding tour to visit friends, from which she returned large with child. She and her doting grandmother Martha had busied themselves that fall preparing for the arrival of the “sweet stranger,” as they called the baby. On this day, the cries of the newborn could be heard echoing in the upstairs halls, and Nelly and the child, born November 27, remained confined to the second floor. Nelly’s brother, eighteen-year-old George Washington Parke Custis, was also absent from the domestic scene at dinner, having ridden off on Monday in the company of his brother-in-law to review some of the property Wash had inherited from his late father.

  As he ate, Washington ignored the dampness, but Lear noticed that his neck was wet, that snow still hung from the portion of his hair that had not been protected by his hat. To Washington, the storm outside mattered little. Warmed by the nearby fire, he consumed the meat, vegetabl
es, and hot breads put before him. He was in the bosom of his family, in the house he had remade for Martha, a place that was a safe haven to three generations. Since their marriage in 1759, Martha and George had called the place home. She had arrived with her two surviving children from her first marriage; years later, after the death of Martha’s last surviving child, her son Jacky, in 1783, Wash and Nelly, his two youngest children, had resided there, too, under the tender ministrations of the Washingtons. More recently Lawrence Lewis had moved in. His uncle had invited the young widower to Mount Vernon to act as a social secretary, but Lawrence and Nelly had soon been drawn to one another. Their marriage resulted in the newest arrival, newborn Frances Parke Lewis, the great-grandaughter known affectionately as Parke.

  George Washington—General, President, Founding Father—was now retired after decades of public service. Here at Mount Vernon he inhabited the world as he would have it, a place peopled with the loved ones Mr. Savage’s print had recorded. Issued just the previous year, The Washington Family was already a modest success, but, given the events that unfolded in the next two days, it would soon become one of the most popular images of the day for the saddest of reasons.