The Painter's Chair

by Hugh Howard

  Houdon’s artistry with clay had produced a bust, but he was acutely aware that upon his return to Paris, he would have to complete his commission of the standing sculpture of General Washington—and he would have to do so without the man himself to refer to. The bust would be invaluable, but he also wanted a life mask to measure and study.

  The plaster was ready for use by Thursday. Mount Vernon’s servants’ hall had become Houdon’s workroom and, when Washington came to him, the General’s hair was once again pulled back, and this time covered with a towel. Washington reclined on a large table and a sheet was spread over him to protect his clothing from dollops of plaster. To ease the removal of the plaster mask, his face was lubricated with oil, a thorough dose of which was applied to his eyebrows and lashes.

  The fine powdered plaster was swiftly sifted into a basin containing water and mixed with a flat iron spoon. The plaster was ready, as Washington observed, when “the water is made as thick as Loblolly or very thick cream.” Before the application of the plaster, two quills were inserted, one into each of Washington’s nostrils, so he could breathe. Instructed to remain motionless, Washington lay quietly with his lips pursed and eyes closed.

  The plaster was daubed on by hand and smoothed with a common Philadelphia painter’s brush. No time could be wasted: The creamy plaster soon began to stiffen; with the passage of five or six minutes, it would become difficult to work with. The setting plaster generated heat, and the sculptor and his subject alike could feel the warmth of the crystallization process on their skins.

  While the process was proceeding, six-year-old Eleanor Custis (Nelly) happened past the doorway to the servants’ hall. A daughter of Martha Washington’s son Jacky, Nelly and her younger brother Washy (George Washington Parke Custis) had become wards of the Washingtons. In the four years since her father’s death she had come to regard the General as her father, so Nelly was alarmed at the sight of him laid out on the table, covered with a sheet as if dead. She was soon offered reassurances that all was not as it seemed, and, to her relief, the General shortly reemerged from behind the hardened plaster mask, which was gently removed from his face, lifted from the forehead, then off the chin. When he rose from the table, he was very much alive and well.16

  BEFORE HOUDON AND his apprentices could begin their journey home, several additional tasks remained to be completed.

  The mold of Washington’s face was invaluable, but it was precisely the reverse of what Houdon actually needed, since it was a negative of the General’s features. After curing for some hours, the mold would be lubricated, and freshly mixed plaster poured into it. Once the plaster had set, the negative mold could then be chipped away with the light, slanting blows of a chisel driven by a wooden mallet. In this way, the negative mold would be destroyed, but the plaster cast that emerged from beneath would be an exact reproduction of the General’s face, which Houdon could have at hand to measure and refresh his memory when he returned to his Paris studio.

  The clay bust also needed further attention. It was slowly air-drying, but in order to be made more durable, it needed to be fired into terra cotta (literally “baked earth”). Houdon and his men also wished to make a piece mold of the bust. Fashioned in several sections, the piece mold would leave the original bust intact while making it possible for the sculptor to produce multiple copies.

  In the next several days, Houdon and his men completed their work. They toted the bust to Mount Vernon’s kitchen to fire. The lower temperatures of the bake oven drove off the remaining moisture more slowly than Houdon’s much hotter Paris kiln would have done, thus avoiding the buildup of steam inside and the risk of cracking. After its firing, the surface remained somewhat soft and fragile but intact.

  Houdon departed on Monday, October 17. Washington bade him farewell, noting in his diary, “Having finished the business which bro’t him hither, [he] went up . . . with his People, work and implements in my Barge, to Alexandria, to take a Passage in the Stage for Philadelphia.”17 On arriving in Philadelphia three days later, the sculptor presented a copy of the bust to Benjamin Franklin. Impatient to return to Paris, Houdon soon traveled to New York and sailed for Eu rope, carrying the life mask in his baggage, leaving his workmen to bring the mold of the bust and another positive cast when they followed. He reached his home on Christmas Day 1785.

  The original terra cotta bust remained in America, a gift from Houdon to the General. In making the piece molds, his assistants marred the bust slightly, leaving trace adhesions around the eyes. Houdon himself had intentionally left his mark on the bust’s right rear shoulder, incising his signature, Houdon F. 1785. The terra cotta soon found a place of honor in Washington’s study and a reputation in the family as “the best representation of Gen. Washington’s face.”18

  III.

  1786 and After . . . Houdon’s Atelier . . . Palais des Beaux-Arts . . . Paris

  IN JANUARY 1786, Jefferson reported Houdon’s safe return from America and that he came armed “with the necessary mold and measures” to make the full-length statue of Washington.19But Houdon still required a bit of help. For one thing, he needed a decision: What would be the appropriate apparel for the Washington marble?

  “Permit me,” Jefferson wrote to Washington, “to ask you whether there is any particular dress or any particular attitude which you would rather wish to be adopted?”20

  As usual, Washington sought other people’s counsel before expressing his own opinion. The standard approach in Paris, Washington learned, was the classical. In sculpture, as in buildings and paintings, the dress of antiquity was in vogue, meaning his marble representation might be wrapped in a Roman tunic or toga. The prevailing assumption among artists was that truth and beauty were best served by the idealized dress of the ancients and that, in contrast, contemporary clothes would be vulgar and distracting.

  Washington wasn’t so sure. From an old aide-de-camp turned diplomat, David Humphreys, he learned of The Death of General Wolfe, the Benjamin West portrayal of General Wolfe in his own British uniform. That painting had persuaded a new generation of painters—among them Charles Willson Peale—of the rightness of contemporary dress. George Washington tended to see the argument in the same way. “A servile adherence to the garb of antiquity might not be altogether so expedient as some little deviation in favor of the modern costume,” Washington wrote back to Jefferson, employing his usual epistolary manner of writing in quiet understatement rather than making overbearing demands. “This taste which has been introduced in the painting by Mr. West I understand is received with applause and prevails extensively.”21

  Houdon considered both options, executing two scale models, each perhaps eighteen inches high. In one Washington was in modern military costume, carrying a walking stick, his sword hung from a column beside him. In the other, he wore a cape, his lower legs uncovered, his feet clad in sandals. Jefferson favored the notion of modern dress and replied to Washington that not only West but such other Americans abroad as John Singleton Copley and John Trumbull shared his view. It was decided.

  Deciding and doing, though, were different things. Washington’s bust and life mask had been at hand to measure and contemplate for the head, but Houdon wished a life model to stand in as he shaped the statue’s legs, arms, and torso. After his fortnight at Mount Vernon, Houdon knew that not just anyone would do. Few men of their time stood as tall as the General, but his stature alone did not account for his powerful presence. He was made of large parts yet he moved with a lightness and grace that belied his size.

  In June 1789, Jefferson arrived for one of his periodic progress visits to Houdon’s studio, this time with New Yorker Gouverneur Morris at his side. Despite his peg leg (years earlier, Morris had endured an amputation after a carriage accident), he carried himself with an easy grace, and he was a strikingly handsome six-foot-four. He was renowned for his charming way with the ladies and his gift for business. He and Washington were friends (at Washington’s behest, he had drafted much of the Co
nstitution), but the gregarious Morris did not share his friend’s diffident personality. He did share Washington’s gift for turning heads—even dressed in his dark, unornamented American suit, Morris had an élan that stood out on the streets of Paris—and Houdon immediately recognized him as a suitable double for the General.

  Morris stood for two lengthy modeling sessions. After the first, on Friday, June 5, 1789, he noted in his diary, “I stand for [Houdon’s] Statue of Genl. Washington, being in the humble employment of a Manakin.” Four days later he reported, “This morning [I went] to Mr. Hudon’s . . . to stand for the Statue of the General until I am heartily tired.”22

  Still another three years would pass before Houdon completed the statue. Because of construction delays at the Virginia State Capitol, an additional four years elapsed before the statue and its tall plinth, together weighing thirty-six thousand pounds, were loaded into three cases and shipped to America on the ship Planter. And it wouldn’t be until 1803 that James Monroe, minister to France, paid Houdon his full fee. But Houdon had captured George Washington at Mount Vernon. Pensive and inward-looking, the man seemed to nurture no dreams of executive power. In Washington’s own memorable turn of phrase, the tall American whom Houdon visited had retired into himself.23

  CHAPTER 6

  Three Friends of Mr. Trumbull

  The greatest motive I had or have for engaging in, or for continuing my pursuit of painting, has been the wish of commemorating the great events of our country’s revolution.

  —John Trumbull to Thomas Jefferson, June 11, 1789

  I.

  1784–1785 . . . At Mr. Benjamin West’s . . . London

  WITH AN UNEAS confidence in own destiny, John Trum-bull remained true to his promise not to set foot on British soil until peace was restored. After his return to America, he lived for a time with his family in Lebanon, Connecticut. Next he worked for his brother David in New York, helping provision the Continental Army, but he continued to struggle to find his proper place.

  His father still wished him to engage in commerce or perhaps the law. “With proper study,” the old governor told him, “[you] should make a respectable lawyer.” But Trumbull felt a passionate urge to pursue the arts. As he tried to justify his leanings, he once more debated the matter with his father. “I . . . entered into an elaborated defense of my predilection,” he later wrote, “and dwelt upon the honors paid to artists in the glorious days of Greece and Athens.” His father dismissed the argument simply. “You forget, sir,” he told his son, “that Connecticut is not Athens.”1In the face of his father’s insistent urgings, Trumbull determined to resume his artistic apprenticeship as soon as possible, and in December 1783 that moment arrived. The end of the war permitted him to resume his pursuit of instruction in England.

  The speed of his journey back across the Atlantic seemed a good omen. No great wind blew the traveler off course, and the winter passage required an unremarkable forty-one days. The trip had a certain symmetry, too, as the good ship Mary sailed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and made landfall at Portsmouth, England, on January 16, 1784. Even as he made his way from the port city on England’s south coast to the British capital, the Continental Congress back home prepared to ratify the Treaty of Paris in Philadelphia. With the war at an end, Trum-bull’s military rank could once more safely precede his name, and he vowed never again to relinquish the title of colonel Trumbull.

  The momentum from his journey carried over into his new life in England. The returning student devoted himself to his training, rising each day at five o’clock to study anatomy and to tend to his correspondence before his eight o’clock breakfast. As Trumbull had hoped, Benjamin West welcomed him back to his studio at 14 Newman Street, and, after making the twenty-minute walk into the city each morning from his quarters near outlying Paddington Square, he worked all day at his easel at West’s, pausing only for an afternoon dinner about two o’clock. His friend Gilbert Stuart, though no longer at Mr. West’s, was nearby, having established his own Painting Room at No. 7 Newman Street. Stuart’s reputation as a portraitist brought him much custom.

  Trumbull began spending evenings at the Royal Academy in drawing classes. Most of his fellow students there were mere boys, lads very much younger than the twenty-nine-year-old Trumbull. He discovered to his dismay that many of them drew better than he, but his disciplined approach paid off. Trumbull was soon able to write home to his brother Jonathan, “Judges of the Art declare that I have made a more rapid progress in the few months I have been here than they have before known.”2

  His daytime labors in West’s studio produced portraits. The first of them was a likeness of Sir John Temple, an aristocratic Englishman whom Trumbull knew from his time in Boston (Temple was married to the daughter of the Bay State’s governor, James Bowdoin). When Trum-bull asked West to appraise the work, his mentor expressed admiration for Sir John Temple, and the canvas was submitted to the Royal Academy, where it was exhibited later that year. A picture he finished in June 1784, a father-and-son portrait of an old Connecticut merchant friend, Jeremiah Wadsworth and His Son, Daniel, won fewer plaudits. No less a personage than Joshua Reynolds offered Trumbull his critique. “The moment he saw it,” the colonel reported, “he said in a quick sharp tone, ‘that coat is bad, sir, very bad; it is not cloth—it is tin, bent tin.’ ” Though he accepted the correctness of the observation, Trumbull made a point thereafter of not “expos[ing] my imperfect works to the criticism of Sir Joshua.”3

  Even so, Trumbull’s overall progress pleased him. Just eight months into his second English sojourn, he felt confident enough to confide in his brother, “If I chose to give myself entirely to portraits I could more than support myself, as I receive ten guineas for what I can easily finish in a week.”4But he felt a rising dissatisfaction, too, sensing that his strong puritan streak could never be satisfied with painting mere likenesses of men wealthy enough to pay his fees. Even as he began to fulfill his long-held desire to succeed as an artist, he felt a need to perform a public service for his country across the sea. He would soon explain to a newfound patron, Thomas Jefferson, that portrait painting is “little useful to Society, and unworthy of a man who has talents for more serious pursuits.”5

  Fortunately for Trumbull, Benjamin West was at hand to show him another path.

  FOR TWENTY YEARS, West had been making history paintings. Some of his early canvases portrayed mythological scenes drawn from classical sources, while others featured more recent English battles. When the Pennsylvanian had first arrived in London, he painted as other contemporary history painters did, in the Grand Style, before he shocked the London art world with The Death of General Wolfe.

  Even before the public unveiling of that painting in 1771, word had reached his patron, George III, of the radical five-by-seven-foot canvas on West’s easel. The king let it be known that he had no interest in acquiring a painting in which the heroes were dressed in coats, breeches, and cocked hats. In an equally dismissive mood, Reynolds had come to call at West’s studio. On seeing at first hand the work in progress, Reynolds urged West to abandon “the modern garb of war” for “the classic costume of antiquity, as much more becoming the inherent greatness of [the] subject.”6 West disregarded the advice and completed his painting without regard to one of the essential tenets of neoclassicism; instead, he dressed the officers and soldiers at the 1759 Battle of Quebec in their actual costume.

  When Trumbull heard the story in the next decade, he also learned that from the first day the completed canvas was exhibited, on April 29, 1771, The Death of General Wolfe was almost universally admired. The public had queued up along Pall Mall to file through the Royal Academy gallery in which the painting hung. Politician William Pitt, actor David Garrick, and even Sir Joshua himself expressed their admiration. Reynolds’s response, in particular, was gratifying. “I retract my objections,” Reynolds said “. . . and I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but occasion a revolution
in the art.”7Though the picture had already been sold privately for £400, King George reversed his earlier judgment and requested a copy for his personal collection. Trum-bull also learned that sales of the engraving of The Death of General Wolfe had proven even more profitable.

  In the years since, other history paintings found a ready market, too, among them new works by West and others by his fellow American John Singleton Copley. The independent-minded Bostonian had himself broken a long-established precedent when he chose not to exhibit his Death of the Earl of Chatham at the Royal Academy, instead installing the painting, which portrayed the collapse of William Pitt on the floor of the House of Lords, in a private pavilion. More than twenty thousand people paid admission to view the ten-foot-wide canvas for which fifty-five noblemen had sat during Copley’s two years of work. He netted some five thousand pounds. Copley also refused an offer (fifteen hundred guineas) to purchase the picture outright, opting instead to commission a run of twenty-five hundred impressions of a large-scale engraving, which quickly sold out.

  The son and brother of merchants, Trumbull knew the ring of commerce when he heard it. Since boyhood, he had also recognized in himself a deep desire to paint, and now, as he neared his thirtieth birthday, he was finally producing paintings that people of taste and training esteemed. He was also acutely aware that his means of making a living was at best tenuous. Further, he felt burdened by the need, as a patriot and a member of a family with a long history of public service, to make some larger contribution.