Washington Winter Show 2020

60 The general sat for Wright during the fall of 1783, while awaiting the war’s end; Wright subsequently created both an oil portrait and an idealized classical profile, which he reworked as a small drypoint etching of Washington in uniform. Exquisitely drawn but inexpensive and easy to copy, Wright’s profile view was well-suited for mass- production. Appearing in medals, coins, stamps, ceramics, textiles, broadsides, books, magazines, and other prints, it shared with Houdon’s and Stuart’s likenesses a prime role in shaping the popular image of Washington. 18 Davenport, Iowa, penmanship teacher William Henry Pratt created two calligraphic versions of Stuart’s “Athenaeum” portrait of Washington (National Portrait Gallery/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): in one, the president emerges from carefully shaded words of the Declaration of Independence (fig. 9), and in the other, from the Constitution and first thirteen amendments. Pratt also penned at least four calligraphy portraits of Abraham Lincoln within the text Fig. 11: George Washington, by Jean-Antoine Houdon, created at Mount Vernon, 1785. Clay. Transferred to the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association through the generosity of John Augustine Washington III, 1860. Photography by Gavin Ashworth.