The Painter's Chair (34 page)
Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
EDWARD SAVAGE operated his New York museum, the Columbian Gallery, until 1810. Thereafter he installed his collection in Boylston
Hall, Boston, which he called the New York Museum, before retiring to his farm in Princeton, Massachusetts. He died there
in July 1817. His survivors inherited
The Washington Family
, which was valued at $550 in his probate inventory. After a century of ownership changes (it was often exhibited but remained
privately held), it finally moved to its permanent home at the National Gallery.
Whatever its merits as a painting, engravings of
The Washington Family
became the iconic image of Washington and his family for two generations of Americans; its fame and popularity far exceeded
the hopes of its creator in uncounted versions of Mr. Savage’s 1798 print, an ever-evolving series of mezzotints, paintings,
magazine engravings, and lithographs. The clothing changed, the columns in the background came and went, and, in the Civil
War era, slave William Lee disappeared; but throughout the nineteenth century, Americans came to know the domestic Washington
largely as Savage had pictured the president and his family.
21
The image became a cultural fixture, and schoolgirls replicated Savage’s family portrait in needlework samplers. By 1850 the
average American hadn’t a clue what the current president looked like (it was Millard Fillmore). The chief executives who
served between Washington and Fillmore were similarly unrecognizable. Thanks in part to Savage’s
The Washington Family
and, to a lesser degree, Stuart’s Athenaeum portrait, the first president remained a familiar figure.
22
Two of the principal characters in these pages never painted Washington. Still, this is unmistakably a book about the stepchildren
of BENJAMIN WEST and JOHN SMIBERT. The latter died early (in 1751) but left behind him the entombed Painting Room that so
many painters came to see. West lived two decades into the nineteenth century. He had tutored Charles Willson Peale, made
Stuart something of a partner, and employed Trumbull in his studio while encouraging the younger man’s “National Work.” Later,
Washington Allston, Thomas Sully, Rembrandt Peale, Henry Sargent, Samuel F. B. Morse, and a dozen other painters came to him
and found approval, encouragement, and guidance. Trum-bull described West’s friendship as “inexhaustible.”
23
Indeed it was, and when West died, in 1820, his manservant gave voice to the question many were asking themselves: “Where
will they go now?”
24
Yet it is Washington himself who stands at the fulcrum. When he was born, the New World had virtually no artists, and few
colonials had ever seen a painting. For centuries, Eu ro pe an princes, philosophers, and statesmen had exercised a lively
interest in the arts, but in the early eighteenth century, the life of the American settler remained a struggle for survival
and, on behalf of Eu rope an investors, for profits.
Within Washington’s lifetime (1732–1799), a cultural transformation occurred. He helped engineer the introduction of neoclassical
architecture as the nation’s de facto style, as evidenced by both its new capital city and the homes of its merchant, landowner,
and middle classes. In Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and even Boston where a puritan ban survived into the 1790s, theaters
had opened their doors to eager audiences. Painting and sculpture assumed a broad new presence in a country whose citizens,
possessed of both independence and a growing prosperity, explored the life of the mind by pursuing new intellectual and artistic
tastes.
The artists West trained sought to establish the art of painting in America and to do it in a distinctly American way. To
his core, Charles Willson Peale was an egalitarian, convinced that everyone should be exposed to art and science. Trumbull
saw America’s quest for independence as immensely noble, a cause worthy of paintings as great as those of the Euro pe an masters.
Stuart, as his daughter reported, stood in awe of Washington, the man they all painted, the central figure in the story.
These artists all struggled to survive on their artistic output. They had no royal patronage as Benjamin West had had although,
where they could, they aped aspects of West’s economic models (he pioneered the sale of prints from his paintings, and each
of these painters produced their fair share of mezzotints and other prints). If they each achieved a certain fame, none made
his fortune. Only Gilbert Stuart influenced the practice of painting beyond the boundaries of the United States.
By the time Rembrandt Peale and Wash Custis died, in the years immediately before the Civil War, artists faced a fresh challenge.
Portraiture was becoming the province of the photograph. At the same time, a broader public taste for art had made America’s
natural wonders the new favorite subject for painting (think John James Audubon and the landscapes of the Hudson River School).
Rembrandt Peale had personal experience of the generational shift that was occurring. He sought a major commission to paint
Lafayette during the “Farewell Tour,” but he lost out to the younger Samuel F. B. Morse; Morse, in turn, would soon retire
from portraiture (he had inventions to pursue), and he watched as his friends Asher Durand and Thomas Cole changed the focus
of painting in America. The great era of American portraiture had ended as the new artists begin to paint pictures of America,
not Americans.
IV.
Seeing Washington
A
S VARIED AS the portraits are, certain Washington attributes are notably absent. For his time, Washington was very tall and
large-limbed. As some big men do, he exuded a quiet strength with no apparent attempt to display his physical prowess. He
had the air of a great natural athlete, who understands intuitively that it must be left to his public to describe his capabilities.
To see him was to understand.
That quality of Washington is lost to us. In thinking of Washington we must
imagine
a man of unusual size, evident strength, and surprising grace. Many of his contemporaries described his person and movements
as
majestic
and
splendid,
words not often associated with physicality. He took great pains with his clothing, military and civilian. Appearances, Washington
believed, set the tone for the meetings of men. He could never enter a room unnoticed. Since he cannot enter ours, we must
take his physical presence on faith.
Another characteristic that a painted likeness can only suggest is the man’s quietude. After being derided as a young soldier
for a foolish remark about the sound of a bullet whizzing by, he made it a rule to keep his own counsel. By temperament, he
was a private man, and his sense of educational inferiority (his schooling ended as he entered his teen years) reinforced
his reserve. As a soldier he learned early that an officer cannot be a friend to his men. As president (both of the Confederation
Convention and of the nation) he occupied a lonely seat at the top of the pyramid, apart from everyone else in the government.
Even in casual society he felt no obligation to fill silences. Mount Vernon guests reported that when an awkward quiet fell
at the dinner table, Washington seemed quite content to eat in silence. He liked the company of women very much, and perhaps
he relaxed with them in a way he did not with men. Unfortunately, aside from some warm and confiding correspondence, we have
little evidence of these relationships. If George Washington had a reserve that was close to impenetrable, undoubtedly Martha
had her means of getting through to him (Wash remembered his tiny grandmother grabbing her husband’s waistcoat button to get
his attention), but she left virtually no written evidence of their connection, having burned her correspondence with the
man she referred to as “the General.”
Washington’s contemporaries recorded the pleasure he took in easy conversation and in the witticisms of others. The painstaking
process of portrait-painting leaves us with no smiling images of the man (he is said to have laughed rarely but to have smiled
often); undoubtedly his loss of teeth and primitive dentures account for the frozen and distorted grimace characteristic of
his later portraits. If we had a sense that his features sometimes relaxed and softened, we might feel as if we knew Washington
better. But few smiling images of anyone survive from that time.
His gaze was attentive, even penetrating. He listened with great care to what was said to him. Some observers thought his
intellect slow, but those who knew him best understood his intelligence was not of the rapid and clever sort. His thinking
was deliberate, balanced, and considered. In his voluminous letters he constructs arguments with great care. Only rarely does
he resort to metaphor.
Washington wasn’t an idea man in the way that Jefferson and Hamilton were. He was, in an antediluvian sense, a
manager
. In an era before the business of America was business (then it was farming), he was learning the new art of managing men
who were no one’s subjects. He was mastering the governance of a country by consensus, collaboration, and, perhaps above all,
his own good sense. He understood intuitively that every move he made as president set some sort of precedent, whether it
was his conduct at afternoon levees or his creation of the body of advisers now called the Cabinet. He took a slow and thoughtful
approach to everything as a systematic, deeply methodical man. As James Madison said of him, his tendency was to take things
as he found them. He also had the self-confidence to recruit better-trained and faster-firing minds to work for him.
These latter facets of his character can be fairly seen in the portraits. In the inscrutable expressions on Stuart’s canvas,
for example, a man of great self-control wrestling with himself can be distinguished. His temper was rarely unchecked (those
who did witness its detonation attested to its white heat); his black moods were less uncommon. He was a melancholy man. His
first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, once described him as “inclined to gloomy apprehensions.” Washington wished with
all his heart for the great American experiment to work; but he had many lingering doubts. In his farewell address, he observed,
“At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation; and if their Citizens should not be completely
free and happy, the fault will be intirely their own.” In his likenesses we read both doubt and duty.
Washington was a man of unquestioned bravery, but, as a general, he lost more battles than he won. He was not motivated by
power, fame, or money (for most of his life, he had all three, though the land-rich farmer at times had significant cash-flow
concerns). Washington embodied leadership. Here was a man who won people’s trust and confidence in an instant. He was serious
and somber. For a public man, he was remarkably private.
He never officially ran for office. There were no campaigns in his time, as the cacophony of electoral debate grew louder
only after he left the stage. His electability was innate. His imposing presence was crucial, of course, but so was his desire
to listen to others rather than himself. He had the invaluable gift of being able to remember people’s names on brief acquaintance.
He never had a great deal of cash at hand but he rarely extended an empty palm to those who asked; Washington’s account books
over the years recorded hundreds and hundreds of acts of charity, gifts to poor men, soldiers, widows, the wounded, schools,
people who lost their homes in fires, orphans, and the aged. His manner simply suited the game.
OUR VIEW OF Washington is linked to the Athenaeum portrait, an image that has grown so familiar it has been called “the household
Washington.” The unfinished Stuart canvas is enigmatic, but with close study, the viewer begins to realize that the Washington
in the portrait isn’t simply iconic. The General, nearing the end of his life, has begun to relax. His duty is nearly done.
We are looking at a man on his way home after a very long journey. Doesn’t he seem to have his eye on posterity? The effort
to intuit his character is important: To understand the America he contemplated, shaped, and helped to invent, we must seek
to understand him.
He was the midwife at the birth of his country, and he was
the
unavoidable presence as American painting emerged. When Smibert came to America, most puritanical Bostonians regarded portraits
as ungodly; in effect, there was no artistic culture in the colonies. In Washington’s time art emerged from the drawing room
and went on display in galleries and public buildings. Charles Willson Peale helped make admiring likenesses popular, as the
obliging man painted likable pictures of the well-to-do to display in their homes and to assure they would be remembered after
they were gone. The colonial Mr. Copley, before his premature departure for England (he never returned to America after independence),
did the same. Trumbull’s aspirations were loftier, and he prided himself on nothing less than painting history. Savage, whose
flair as a showman was undoubtedly greater than his artistic gifts, reached a larger public. His audience was the emerging
middle class, men and women who could identify with his big painting of America’s great hero. They admired not just the man
but Martha, too, together with their wards, in a resplendent setting that represented a collective American future.
