Fooling George Washington

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Charles Wilson Peale (1741-1827) had the distinction of painting this, the first portrait of George Washington, in 1772. Peale had been a saddler, but when he failed in that business, he turned to portraiture. And Washington was a natural choice as a sitter because the two men had served together in the military. They formed a friendship that lasted the rest of Washington's life, and Peale eventually painted dozens of Washington portraits.

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Peale, who was the patriarch of a family of artists, was a man of many interests and many talents. Here's a self-portrait from 1822, with Peale showing off his museum, the first in the United States. The Peale museum was particularly significant because it displayed assembled mastodon skeletons from scientific expeditions that Peale had organized.

Charles Wilson Peale's portraits of George Washington are his most important work, but the painting that probably generates the most appreciation is the 1795 painting of Peale's sons Raphaelle and Titian, below.

photo by Don Juan Tenorio

A masterpiece of trompe l'oeil, the stairway painting is surrounded by a real door frame and includes a perfectly matching real bottom step.

In his last days, George Washington visited Peale's studio and came across this painting. The courtly Washington was used to gawkers and as he passed by, he turned to the boys and bowed.
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Cashing in on George

wikipedia.org

This 1772 painting of George Washington is the first portrait of him painted from life, and depicts him in his uniform as a colonel of the Virginia Regiment, from the French and Indian War. It was actually painted 12 years after the war by Charles Wilson Peale (1741-1827), a friend who had served with Washington.

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While most of us automatically think of Gilbert Stuart when we think of Washington's portraits, Charles Wilson Peale actually painted seven life portraits of the President, more than any other artist. As I mentioned in my posting, George Washington's Left Eye, life portraits of Washington were a goldmine for artists of the new republic because they served as templates from which many lucrative copies could be made. 

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And so Peale painted dozens of Washington portraits. The most successful depicted Washington at the Battle of Princeton. The first version was finished in 1779, and 18 copies were made of it, including one for King Louis XVI of France.

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Here, I've cropped four versions so that the faces can be better seen. I'm guessing that Peale had a replica of Washington's uniform and posed models in it, then simply superimposed the same head, painting after painting.

Peale had 16 children and three of his sons — Raphaelle, Rembrandt and Rubens — were also gifted artists. A fourth, Titian Peale, was both an artist and a pioneer in photography.

In 1795, George Washington agreed to sit one last time for Charles Wilson Peale. Peale painted Washington, but he had actually arranged the sitting so that 17-year-old Rembrandt could also paint the elderly President, thereby assuring a lifetime of commissions for Rembrandt. Below is the 17-year-old's first portrait of Washington.

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His father did indeed insure a lifetime of work, and Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) went on to paint Washington for years. Rembrandt Peale's most popular portrait is the polished Patriæ Pater, shown below (I wish I could find a larger example of it!).

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I think the most successful portrait of Washington (by anyone) is the Rembrandt Peale version that has hung in the Oval Office through many administrations.

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You can see that aside from the uniform, it is a nearly identical to Patriæ Pater.

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fineartsamerica.com  |  Mathew Brady: Historian with a Camera

Above left is a self-portrait of Rembrandt Peale and on the right is a daguerreotype portrait of him by Mathew Brady. By the time Rembrandt Peale sat for Brady, he was in his last years, and the only remaining artist who had painted Washington from life.

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