by Hugh Howard
The task has involved turning the pages of countless other books, too, since the literature concerning Washington is oceanic. It is possible to reach into time’s depths and find biographies written in the revolutionary era and in every generation since; that I’ve done, too, though the points of view to be found are as wide as the horizon.
I learned from a range of scholars, too. Anyone who investigates the painters finds that the good people in each category seem to come in pairs: Charles Coleman Sellers and Lillian B. Miller wrote the basic books on Peale; in the same way, Henry Wilder Foote and Richard H. Saunders have written of John Smibert; Theodore Sizer and Irma B. Jaffe of John Trumbull; Dorinda Evans and Carrie Rebora Barratt of Gilbert Stuart; and John Hill Morgan and Ellen G. Miles more generally on portraits of Washington. In studying Washington there is the key pairing of Douglas Southall Freeman and James Thomas Flexner.
A fuller list of the sources essential to this book is as follows:
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_______. Papers of John Adams. 13 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977–2006.
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_______. The Sculptures of Houdon. London: Phaidon, 1975.
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Casper, Scott E. “First First Family: Seventy Years with Edward Savage’s The Washington Family.” Imprint, vol. XXIV, no. 2 (1999), pp. 2–15.
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_______. Sculpture in America. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984.
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_______. “Pocahontas: or, The Settlers of Virginia, A National Drama.” Reprinted in Representative American Plays, Arthur Hobson Quinn, ed. New York: Century Co., 1917.
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_______. History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States. 2 vols. New York: George P. Scott and Co., 1834.
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_______. His Excellency, George Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
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_______. The Genius of Gilbert Stuart. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.
_______. “Gilbert Stuart and Manic Depression: Redefining His Artistic Range.” American Art, vol. XVIII, no. 1 (2004), pp. 10–31.
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_______. George Washington: The Forge of Experience, 1732–1775. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1965.
_______. George Washington in the American Revolution, 1775–1783. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1968.
_______. George Washington and the New Nation, 1783–1793. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970.
_______. George Washington: Anguish and Farewell, 1793–1799. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1972.
_______. Gilbert Stuart: A Great Life in Brief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.
_______. John Singleton Copley. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948.
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_______. “Mr. Smibert Shows His Pictures, March 1730.” New England Quarterly, vol. VIII, no. 1 (March 1935), pp. 14–28.
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_______. R. E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934–35.
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_______. “Houdon’s Washington in Richmond: Some New Observations.” American Art Journal, vol. X, no. 2 (November 1978), pp. 72–80.
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_______. “Prints Washington Lived With at Mount Vernon.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. XXX, no. 3 (March 1935), pp. 63–65.
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_______. and Edward Biddle. Memoirs of the Life and Works of Jean-Antoine Houdon. Philadelphia: privately printed, 1911.
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_______. Rembrandt Peale, 1770–1860: A Life in the Arts. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1985.
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_______. “Found: John Smibert’s Portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio.” Art Journal, vol. XXXV, no. 3 (1976), pp. 210–215.
_______. John Trumbull, Patriot-Artist of the American Revolution. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975.
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