The Painter's Chair

by Hugh Howard

  That Peale failed to capture the colonel’s physicality was a little surprising since the painter had witnessed a demonstration of Washington’s athletic prowess during his visit to Mount Vernon. His stay had been extended when his brief was broadened to include the painting of watercolor miniatures on ivory of Patsy, Jacky, and Martha. He also found the Washingtons’ home a welcoming and social place, since at dinner most days there were a dozen or more at the table, including family, friends, and other visitors. In general, he observed, “the Character of the Virginians for Hospitality” was higher than that of his patrons in “Pensilvania.” What he left unsaid was that the former provided him room and board at their cost, a kindness not extended to him in the northern colonies.9

  One day during his stay Peale and several other guests at the Mansion were outdoors playing a round of “pitching the bar.” A contest akin to traditional log-and pole-throwing, the game involved heaving a heavy iron bar as far as possible. One man would throw, and the distance he achieved was marked with a stake. Then another competitor would have a go. On this day, the man who threw it the farthest wasn’t even in the competition.

  Washington unexpectedly appeared amidst the men, who were standing on the lawn stripped to their shirts of white linen, their sleeves rolled up for ease of movement. He inquired into the progress of their game. When the markers indicating the distances achieved were pointed out to him, his somber visage broke into a confident smile.

  “[W]ithout putting off his coat,” Peale reported, “[he] held out his hand for the missile. No sooner did the heavy iron bar feel the grasp of his mighty hand than it lost the power of gravitation, and whizzed through the air, striking the ground far, very far, beyond our utmost limits.”

  The onlookers were amazed. Washington soon left them to their exertions but promised to return. “When you beat my pitch, young gentlemen, I’ll try again.”10

  If Peale’s portrait didn’t capture the latent power of the Virginia colonel, certain physical details were accurate. The hair that appears from beneath his hat is reddish brown. The nose is long and broad and the face ruggedly handsome. The eyes, though hooded, are identifiably bluish-gray. In life Washington was forty years of age, but in Peale’s portrayal the age of the soft-featured man is uncertain. Out of kindness, perhaps, Peale also chose not to mar Washington’s fair complexion with the scars around his nose, evidence of his bout of smallpox in Barbados. Yet the boredom of the sitter comes through; as he himself reported to Boucher, while posing he felt himself “under the influence of Morpheus,” feeling at times as if he were falling asleep on his feet.11

  The setting Peale chose for his canvas was not the Virginia plantation where he painted Washington. The backdrop for the dashing officer in the regimental blue and red uniform suggests not the cultivated tobacco fields of Tidewater Virginia but the Ohio country, with a mountain stream and Indian camp on the frontier where much of the war had been fought. Years earlier, Washington’s exploits there had brought him to the attention of King George II.

  Washington’s service to the king during the 1750s had had mixed results. The 1754 ambush by Washington’s men of a detachment of French soldiers, during which the enemy’s commanding officer, the Sieur de Jumonville, was killed, helped kindle the French and Indian War. Afterward, the twenty-two-year-old Washington had confided in a younger brother, “I heard the bullet’s whistle and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.” When his remark was published and brought to attention of the king, Washington’s boast led George II to remark that “he would not think so if he had been used to hear many.”12Later that summer, Washington suffered the ignominy of having to march out of Fort Necessity with his troops in full surrender to the French.

  The recapture of the smoking remnant of Fort Duquesne in 1758 by Washington and his men was an anticlimax (the French garrison had abandoned and burned their stronghold), but Washington’s years of service in the frontier war left him with more military experience than any other colonial officer, as well as a reputation for bravery under fire (he had two horses shot from beneath him, and four bullets rent his clothing). Both would be invaluable credentials years later when the colonists decided to muster their own army.

  By the end of the month, Peale had completed his work at Mount Vernon. He and Washington had not become close friends; friendship was a rare gift to which few of Washington’s many acquaintances could lay claim. But they found common ground. Recognizing his guest’s mechanical cleverness, Washington had given Peale a personal tour of the new Mount Vernon gristmill, which had gone into operation only the year before.

  During the evenings at Mount Vernon, the easy sociability of the household meant that Peale had occasion to enjoy the Potomac breezes in Washington’s company, and even to dance with the sixteen-year-old Patsy Custis, Martha’s daughter, who he believed “did not enjoy a good state of health.”13His insight was sound: Twelve months later, as Washington reported to a brother-in-law, “she was seized with one of her usual [epileptic] fits and expired in it in less than two minutes without uttering a word, a groan, or scarce a sigh.” As Washington said sadly, “the sudden and unexpected blow . . . almost reduced my poor wife to the lowest ebb of misery.”14

  By then, Peale had gone other places and painted other portraits. On his departure from Mount Vernon on May 30, 1772, after a most enjoyable stay, Peale had received full payment from Washington. The bill amounted to £18.4.0 for the 501.2-inch-by-411.2-inch Washington portrait, and £13 for the three miniatures (each was just 11.2 inches high, 11.16 inches wide). The two men, their first transaction complete, could not have guessed that this first image of George Washington, portrayed as a soldier in service to the Crown, would be the first of many portraits Peale would paint of Washington as his role in the world evolved.

  CHAPTER 3

  The General

  I am well acquainted with Gen.l Washington who is a Man of very few words but when he speaks it is to the purpose, [and] what I have often admired in him is he [has] allways avoided saying any thing of the actions in which he was Engaged in the last War . . . [H]e is uncommonly Modest, very Industrous and prudent.

  —Charles Willson Peale, August 29, 1775 1

  I.

  1775–1776 . . . The Pennsylvania State House . . . Philadelphia

  CHARLES WILLSON PEALE wrote the recipe in his diary. “To make a Vernish,” he noted, “Take Mastick & Seed Lac [and] deso[l]ve them in Terpintine . . . mix this with the Oil.” The mastick and lac were imported resins extracted from mastic trees and the shell of the lac beetle, respectively; turpentine and linseed oil were made in America. Once he had prepared it, Peale applied the dense liquid to his finished oil paintings to protect them.2

  Over time, such varnishes tend to saponify, to yellow as they oxidize. Linseed oil requires years to dry completely, which means that dust adheres to the varnish. The result can be the appealing patina of age or, more often, a darkening and ever-more-opaque membrane on a painting’s surface. This makes Mr. Peale’s varnish a useful metaphor for considering the several portraits he painted of General Washington in the 1770s. To understand the pictures, we must look through not only the haze of the varnish but through a layering of propaganda and perception.

  IN MAY 1775, delegates to the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. As they gathered at the Pennsylvania State House, the men were forced to digest the disturbing news of bloody confrontations at Lexington and Concord the previous month, as well as word of the confiscation of Virginia’s powder stores at Williamsburg. Angry calls for separation from England were offered and quickly countered by arguments for reconciliation.

  Events demanded that the Continental Congress act. The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts was raising an army and sought support from the other colonies. Though he had sat largely mute and served on no committees during the First Continental Congress in 1774, George Washington began to assume new prominence under the altered circumstances. As one of the few experi
enced military officers at hand, he worked on three committees in the next three weeks. His labors on defense strategies and munitions impressed his fellow delegates. He had arrived prepared, bringing along “five books—military.”3As he came to accept that the cause of one colony (namely Massachusetts) required a response from all thirteen, Washington also changed his costume. By the end of May, as John Adams noted for posterity, “Colonel Washington appears at Congress in his uniform.”4

  As military plans began to take shape, no clear consensus existed as to the nascent army’s command structure—or who should be its commander in chief. One man in attendance certainly coveted the job as military leader, and perhaps desired it more than the Virginian in military garb. John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, could claim no military experience. The orphaned son of a minister, he had ascended to wealth and influence in Boston after inheriting his uncle’s booming merchant business. But Hancock, who had helped finance the rebellion and become an outspoken critic of British rule, saw himself as general material. It fell to another Massachusetts delegate, John Adams, to advance the cause of revolution by one long Virginia stride.

  Adams spoke for many when he confided in his wife, Abigail, that Colonel Washington, “by his great experience and abilities in military matters, is of much service to us.”5Despite his diligent work, however, the master of Mount Vernon himself was very much of two minds about the job. He would have preferred returning home (as he wrote to Martha a few days later, “I should enjoy more real happiness and felicity in one month with you, at home, than I have the most distant prospect of reaping abroad, if my stay was to be Seven times Seven years”).6

  Even as he confided in Martha his feelings about his domestic life, more than mere duty kept him in Philadelphia. The military life he lived during the French and Indian War twenty years earlier had been exhilarating and ultimately frustrating, since he had been denied what he regarded as a well-deserved promotion in the king’s army. On the one hand, then, a chance was in the offing to fulfill his military ambitions. Against this, he weighed the odds of succeeding and the understanding that military service would mean time—and who knew how much?—away from Mount Vernon.

  On June 14, John Adams rose from his seat in Congress and made a recommendation. He opened the session that morning by offering a motion to the Second Continental Congress to adopt as its own the army assembled in Massachusetts. The suggestion had been floated some days before, but this time Adams added a staffing recommendation. A general would be required, said Adams, and his choice would be “a gentleman from Virginia.” For Hancock, watching the proceedings from the president’s chair, this was indeed a blow (Adams: “When I came to describe Washington for the commander, I never remarked a more sudden and striking change of countenance. Mortification and resentment were expressed as forcibly as [Hancock’s] face could exhibit them”).7

  In contrast, Washington was suddenly nowhere to be seen. The chair in which he had been sitting near a side door was vacant; the moment he realized that Adams referred to him, Washington had disappeared into the library. Not so many years earlier, the younger and more ambitious Washington had resigned his commission during the French and Indian War for lack of a promotion. Now that a generalship was at hand, it would be ungentlemanly of him to remain in the room when he was clearly to be the topic of conversation.

  In Washington’s absence, reservations about him were expressed by some members of the body, chief among them being the appropriateness of putting a Virginian in charge of an army of New Englanders. But this and other minor objections were soon overcome, and the following day a unanimous resolution was passed electing him “to command all the continental forces raised or to be raised for the defense of American liberty.”8

  Washington took the floor the next day to accept the appointment. With characteristic formality, he began by bowing to the chair and the assembled body. He thanked his colleagues for “the high Honour done me in this Appointment.” To the surprise of many, he then expressed his doubts about his ability to handle the job.

  “[L]est some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation,” offered Washington, “I beg it may be remembered by every Gent[lema]n in the room, that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think my self equal to the Command I am honoured with.” In the next breath he gave a turn to still others by stating his refusal to accept any pay for his generalship. “[A]s no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this Arduous employment at the expense of my domestik ease & happiness I do not wish to make any profit from it.”9He would submit expenses, he allowed, but accept no salary.

  At a time of high anxiety among his peers, Washington met their hopes with no grand promises; if John Hancock was a man who was impressed with himself, Washington felt obliged to downplay both his experience and what he thought people might reasonably expect of him. He agreed to accept a generalship he didn’t exactly want (though he had presented himself in uniform, his impulse seems to have had less to do with military ambition than his desire to jar his fellow delegates into sharing his recognition that military action was unavoidable). He would take the job, but he wanted it understood he would not profit from it.

  He had arrived that May in Philadelphia a well-to-do farmer (a description he himself favored), one among dozens of Patriots committed to the cause and seeking a solution, preferably a peaceful one. Now, in all prudence, he dispatched a draft of a last will and testament to Martha, along with a note of both reassurance and resigned ac ceptance. “[I]t has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this Service,” Washington wrote. “I hope that my undertaking of it, is designed to answer some good purpose—You might, and I suppose did perceive, from the Tenor of my letters, that I was apprehensive I could not avoid this appointment, as I did not even pretend to intimate when I should return—that was the case—it was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my Character to such censures as would have reflected dishonour upon myself, and given pain to my friends . . . I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preservd, & been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall . . . I therefore beg of you to summon your whole fortitude & Resolution, and pass your time as agreeably as possible—nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it from your own Pen.”10

  He soon departed for Massachusetts on a strange errand, having been reborn as the most conspicuous man in America. He was the figurehead chosen to lead an ad hoc army into an undeclared war on behalf of a country that did not yet exist.

  ONE YEAR LATER, Charles Willson Peale sought to render Washington on canvas again. This time his task was to record a reluctant general who, through a concatenation of happenstance, personal style, and physical prowess, had begun his very long run, ongoing to this day, as America’s first and most essential symbol. Peale began a new portrait of Washington on May 29, 1776, one day shy of four years after his departure from Mount Vernon.

  George Washington’s place in the world had continued its radical transformation. No longer was he a provincial aristocrat who, according to his own diaries, had grown soft while devoting his time to playing cards, foxhunting, and surveying his plantations. The man before Charles Willson Peale had emerged as a figure of national and even international note—and a victorious military commander.

  The first important military victory of the war had occurred less than three months earlier. A brilliant military stratagem devised by Washington and his youthful artillery commander, Colonel Henry Knox, had stunned the British forces then occupying Boston. Moving on the night of March 3 under a “moon shining in its full luster,” as Washington described it, his troops positioned cannons atop Dorchester Heights, turning captured British artillery pieces on their owners (undetected by the British, Knox and his men in the preceding weeks had dragged fifty-nine cannon and mortars some three hundred snowy miles from Fort Ticond
eroga, New York). The British awoke on March 4 to the daunting realization that the guns pointed at them from the bluff above meant that defending the town and their ships at anchor was virtually impossible. Ten days later, a great flotilla nine miles long headed out to sea as the British military forces evacuated Boston, taking with them more than a thousand Tory sympathizers.

  Though Washington surely experienced a mixture of exultation, relief, and amazement at this turn of events, he managed, as usual, to keep his feelings to himself. To those around him, his countenance remained unreadable as he watched the sails disappear at the horizon like a distant clothesline hung with ladies’ handkerchiefs. The General had promptly marched his army to New York, wondering whether the British Navy would get there first. Fortunately for the colonials, the British military commander, Lord Howe, had set sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia, enabling Washington’s troops to ready for another siege. This time their positions were reversed, as the Americans, not the British, held a city surrounded by water.

  Yet now Washington was in Philadelphia, a three-day ride distant from his troops, who, accustomed to his everyday presence, watched nervously for the arrival of British ships in New York harbor; they knew very well indeed that they were betwixt battles. Continental Congress President John Hancock had summoned the General, desiring a report on the big victory at Boston. Washington’s visit had also seemed to Hancock an auspicious moment to record him on canvas for his personal collection, so he had summoned Mr. Peale, too.

  John Hancock was far from being a fond relation (recall that Martha commissioned the previous portrait in 1772). His order to Peale to make a three-quarter-length portrait of the General and another of his wife was a conspicuous public gesture. Hancock’s motives were uncertain (some wondered, Does he still desire a military commission for himself? ), but at the very least, Hancock wished to compliment the man in whom the entire nation had placed its trust.