Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/376

370                    THE STUART PORTRAITS OF WASHINGTON. -missioned by him to paint, with the excep- tion of a portrait of Mr. Bingham, now in the possession of some one in Philadelphia.

After this picture was completed for Lord Lansdowne, Washington gave a commis- sion to paint the portraits of himself and Mrs. Washington. As my father was, at this time, inundated with visitors, he found it impossible to attend to his profession, and moved from Chestnut street, Philadelphia, to a country home in Germantown, where he transformed a barn into a painting-room. Here Washington sat for the portrait now at the Athenaeum, Boston. Having by this time become better acquainted with the great man, Stuart gained his entire self- possession; and the General could not fail to be interested in the accomplished artist. After touching upon various sub- jects, the conversation turned upon horses, a subject on which the artist was perfectly at home. This roused the General, giving Stuart a great advantage, in seizing his ex- pression. Then Stuart's love of country life, and knowledge of agriculture in all its forms, gained the sitter's attention. He may, too, have spoken of the heroes he had painted but recently in England, of Lord St. Vincent, and of Lord Rodney. The great desire on the part of Mrs. Washington to have a portrait by Stuart of her husband and of the different mem- bers of his family, is proof of her confidence in the artist's skill in portraiture. The en- thusiasm this portrait occasioned, during the life of Washington, is another proof of its truthfulness. When General and Mrs. Washington took their last sittings my father told Wash- ington it would be of great importance to him to retain the originals, to which Wash- ington replied : "Certainly, Mr. Stuart, if they are of any consequence to you ; I shall be perfectly satisfied with copies from your hand, as it will be impossible for me to sit again at present." The copies made of the originals were for Mount Vernon, but where the copies are now I do not know. A short time after these last pictures were finished, the President called on my father to express the perfect satisfaction of Mrs. Washington and himself at his success ; he promised that if he should sit again for his picture, it would be to him. My father, at this time, had so many commissions to copy the head of the President, and the anxiety to possess them was so great, that gentlemen would tell him if he would make only a sketch, they would be satisfied; and as he was painting other distinguished men of the day, and hurrying to complete their por- traits, these Washingtons were, with some exceptions, literally nothing but sketches. He probably painted two at a time, that is, an hour on each in two mornings. So- many people wrote to Stuart's family, after Washington's death, to know if certain heads of the President were from life, that my father was wont to say : " If the General had sat for all these portraits, he could have done nothing else ; our Independence would have been a secondary matter, or out of the question." The Germantown head of Washington, and the head of Mrs. Washington, were of- fered to the State of Massachusetts for $ i ooo. This sum the State could not give. After the death of the artist, an Englishman of- fered his widow ten thousand dollars for them ; but while she was hesitating whether to do this or not, thinking that they ought to remain in America, the gentleman be- came impatient and returned to England. Some time after this, in an emergency, she accepted the offer of fifteen hundred dollars from the Washington Association and other gentlemen, who, in October, 1831, presented them to the Boston Athenaeum. These heads my father was perfectly sat- isfied with, and always expressed himself to that effect in private and in public ; he was, in fact, proud of his success. It was his intention to have these last heads engraved by Sharp, the finest engraver in Europe, not only for his own reputation, but in order to leave some provision for his family. When asked once for his candid opinion of the comparative merits of the various busts and pictures of Washington, taken at different periods, he answered in the most emphatic manner : " Houdon's bust came first, and my head of him next. When I painted him, he had just had a set of false teeth inserted, which accounts for the constrained expression so noticeable about the mouth and lower part of the face. Houdon's bust does not suffer from this defect* I wanted him as he looked at that time." These gentle- men thanked him most cordially for his candor, and spoke of it afterward with great satisfaction. There has been much fault found with the mouth of Washington, as painted by my father. The history of the Washington portraits, by Henry T. Tuckerman, is writ- head in 1/96.
 * Houdon's bust was made in 1783; Stuart's