The Painter's Chair

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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