Dated Web objects before 1800 through 1839

Rembrandt Peale

Date: after 1824

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.53

Text Entries: A bust in an oval frame shows a man with a frank and determined look on his face and his eyes fixed on the horizon.He seems to embody greatness and virtue. It is George Washington, hero of the struggle for independence and first president of the United States. Elected in 1789, he died just ten years later. Rembrandt Peale is one of the members of an illustrious family of painters who stood at the forefront of the American artistic scene at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. He is the author of great historical works, but he principally painted portraits, hoping to raise the genre to the status of a noble art. During his sojourn in France in 1810, he was able to meet Jacques-Louis David, the preeminent French history painter. After 1840, he devoted himself to variations on the portrait of George Washington, of which more than 65 versions are known today. The sitter is no ordinary man, but a hero who embodies the glory of a young nation. Unlike other portraitists of his time, Peale attached little importance to the individual details of his sitter's features and instead established a balance between physical resemblance and the idealization of a historical personage. Washington seems to emerge from the darkness and look toward the light. This portrait is surrounded by a trompe-l'oeil stone frame, here a reference to antiquity, which places Washington beyond the common man and binds him to a past that assures the unity of the country.