Washington Winter Show 2020

61 of the Emancipation Proclamation (one with German text) and Ulysses S. Grant with the Republican Party Platform of 1868. The tradition of calligraphic portraits extends back to eighteenth-century France and forward to the present, with Gilbert Stuart’s Washington face emerging from a mosaic of recycled computer keys created by contemporary artist Doug Powell (fig.10). 19 The People’s Choice As the Bicentennial of Washington’s 1732 birth approached, Congress mandated a national celebration, aiming to ensure “that future generations of Americans may live according to the example and the precepts of [Washington’s] exalted life and character and thus perpetuate the American Republic.” New York Congressman Sol Bloom, Bicentennial Commission director, quickly recognized a branding dilemma: of the many likenesses of Washington, which should be the official face of the anniversary? After considering paintings by Peale, Trumbull, and Stuart, a committee of experts, including Col. Harrison H. Dodge, superintendent of Mount Vernon; John C. Fitzpatrick, editor of Washington’s papers, Harvard historian Albert Bushnell Hart; and several others selected Houdon’s undraped classical bust of 1785 as the most authentic, accurate, aesthetically elevated, and emotionally powerful likeness. The public emphatically did not agree; as the Washington Post reported, the American people “plainly enough … indicated ‘that’s not our George Washington.’” The experts, it seemed, had made a mistake, “privileging accuracy of likeness over recognizability.” And so Stuart’s Athenaeum portrait became the Bicentennial mascot, the people’s choice, accorded authenticity by popular vote. Painstakingly reproduced as a chromolithograph, 1.3 million copies carried Washington to every schoolroom and post office, as well as railroad stations, club rooms, churches, and other gathering places. The disdained Houdon bust found a more lasting place, on the Washington quarter; first minted in 1932, it persists to the present, balancing the Stuart portrait imprinted on the dollar bill since 1869. 20 Precisely because no standard likeness of Washington emerged during his lifetime, there has been room for both contemporaries and subsequent generations to choose between competing visions of what a republican leader should or could be. The absence of an officially sanctioned portrait of Washington has kept his image dynamic and relevant, subject to continual variation as well as seemingly endless repetition. Far more effective than any official state portrait of his crowned precursors, two centuries of “crowd sourcing” has made George Washington’s the face of the nation.  ■ Susan P. Schoelwer is the Executive Director of Historic Preservation and Collections and Robert H. Smith Senior Curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon All images are courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association unless otherwise noted. 1. Forensic analysis demonstrates conclusively that dentures preserved at Mount Vernon consist of human and animal teeth (probably horse and cow) and ivory (probably elephant) set in a lead base with silver alloy wire springs—an ingenious but not particularly comfortable contraption, likely explaining the grim set of Washington’s mouth in so many portraits. 2. Whitney A.J. Robertson, “Sleeping Amongst Heroes: Copperplate-printed Bed Furniture in the ‘Washington and American Independance [ sic ] 1776; the Apotheosis of Franklin’ Pattern,” Textile Society of American Symposium Proceedings 2012; accessed online: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/739, 29 October 2019. 3. The original work, a large mural painted by Francis Hayman for Vauxhall Gardens in 1762, does not survive. It is known through a print that was engraved by Simon François Ravenet and published by John Boydell in 1765. 4. Thomas Digges to Thomas Jefferson, 10 March 1793; quoted in Neil Musante, Medallic Washington: A Catalog of Struck, Cast and Manufactured Coins, Tokens and Medals … , 3 vols. (London and Boston: Spink, 2016), 1:60–67, 131–135. 5. Wendy C. Wick, George Washington, An American Icon: The Eighteenth- Century Graphic Portraits (Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Portrait Gallery, 1982), 22–26; John C. Van Horne, “Artist: Paper Medals for American Heroes,” Pierre Eugène Du Simitière: His American Museum 200 Years After (Philadelphia: Library Company, 1985), np. 6. Jonathan Snellenburg, “George Washington in Bronze: A Survey of the Memorial Clocks,” Antiques & Fine Art (Winter 2001), 193–203. 7. Peter Kenny, “Going for the Gold: Two French Ormolu Washington Clocks at Classical American Homes Preservation Trust,” CAHPT Newsletter, Spring/ Summer 2015; accessed online: https://classicalamericanhomes.org/going-for- gold/, 29 October 2019. 8. George Washington Parke Custis to Thomas William Channing Moore, 21 July 1857, in “George Washington Parke Custis’s Opinion of Portraits of Washington,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 18:1 (1894), 84. 9. Carol Soltis Eaton, The Art of the Peales: Adaptations and Innovations (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2017), 256–264; Lillian B. Miller, In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778–1860 (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1992), 144. 10. Carol Eaton Hevner, Rembrandt Peale, 1778–1860: A Life in the Arts (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1985), 66, 88-89; Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 139–140. 11. John Neal, Randolph: A Novel (1823), cited in Barratt and Miles, Gilbert Stuart , 153. 12. Peale called the smaller painting a “George Washington Copy”; Soltis, Art of the Peales, 256–264. 13. Capt. Joseph Dever Fegan to Margaret Potts Fegan, 7 April 1865 (photocopy), object files, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. 14. Wick, George Washington , 51. 15. Laura (Lollie) Virginia Smith (Mrs. William Antoine Stewart) to Mary Stewart Damerell, 6 May 1901 (photocopy), object files, Mount Vernon Ladies Association. 16. “Presents,” Ohio Practical Farmer , 24 November 1877: 331; accessed online: https://books.google.com/books?id=kd1CAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1- PA331&lpg=RA1-PA331&dq=%22Washington+pen+wiper%22&sourc e=bl&ots=Mgqlyputpo&sig=ACfU3U3_6LOpzQUEHpf_N4qXddYRKt DOWQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqs-DRwLXlAhVlnuAKHVXPA- YQ6AEwAnoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Washington%20pen%20 wiper%22&f=false 29 October 2019. 17. Laura Culbertson to Abraham Lincoln, 16 February 1864, in The Lincoln Mailbag: America Writes to the President, 1861–1865 , ed. Harold Holzer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 141. 18. Wick, George Washington , 37, 40, 102. 19. For an invented portrait in calligraphy, see Le Général Washington , by Pierre Jean Paul Berny de Nogent, 1777, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 38.145.563. 20. Adam Greenhalgh, ‘“Not a Man but a God’ The Apotheosis of Gilbert Stuart’s Athenaeum Portrait of George Washington,” Winterthur Portfolio , 41:4 (Winter 2007), 271–284.