George Washington (George Washington / Lansdowne Portrait) - Gilbert Stuart
National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., Estados Unidos
OST - 247x158 - 1796
As the general who led us to victory in the American Revolution
and as our first president, George Washington was
often painted and sculpted. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the hero's portrait.
But it is this portrait that stands for all time as the image that best
represents what Washington meant to us when we were a new nation and continues
to mean to us in the twenty-first century. It is the one picture that we can
say ranks in importance with those sacred founding documents, the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.We see Washington in
1796, the last year of his two-term presidency. Earlier full-length portraits
show him in military uniform, but here he is in civilian dress, revealing that
in our democracy the elected executive is the true commander-in-chief. Standing
in elegant surroundings suggesting the grandeur of European tradition,
Washington is nonetheless not draped like a king, which he refused to be; he is
a man powerful only by the people's consent. This was the man who told us what
this new kind of leader—an elected president—could be and whose maturity and
resolve gave us confidence in our future. The rainbow behind him breaks through
a stormy sky. Washington was lucky in his portraitist, and so are we.
American-born Gilbert
Stuart had eighteen years in Europe to hone his artistry. He
was commissioned by Senator and Mrs. William Bingham of Pennsylvania to provide
a gift to the Marquis of Lansdowne, an English supporter of American
independence. It was copied by Stuart and others as the image of Washington who
sustains our national purpose-the Washington every generation of Americans
needs to rediscover.Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828).
As a military and political figure, George Washington was a
unifying force during the country’s formative years. He fought in the French
and Indian War and later served as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. After being unanimously
elected as the first president of the United States, in 1789, he installed the
Supreme Court and the cabinet, quelled the Whiskey Rebellion, and defeated the
Western Lakes Confederacy in the Northwest Indian War (and facilitated the
subsequent peace negotiations with the alliance). Washington enjoyed immense
popularity at the end of his second term, but he declined to run again,
insisting that the United States needed to take proper precautions to avoid
hereditary leadership or dictatorship.
While mapping out the composition for this painting, American
artist Gilbert Stuart, who had previously worked in England and Ireland, drew
from European traditions of state portraiture to evoque Washington’s
leadership. The artist made a number of direct references to the newly formed
United States, and the pose he chose for the president is believed to allude to
Washington’s annual address in front of Congress in December 1795. Stuart
completed several replicas of the image, which spread rapidly through popular
engravings.
