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(The Athenaeum Portrait), 1796.
Oil on canvas. By Stuart Gilbert.
Jointly owned by the National
Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[Click here to view a larger version]
[Portrait originally posted at Camera Lucida here: Happy Thanksgiving and here: Forces of Nature].
I'm reading a thick, new book on Washington titled Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow (released in 2010). I'm going very slow to digest the dense information, so I'm still at the very beginning. The book brings Washington to life. It is very comprehensive, and the chapters are divided into six parts (plus a prelude on one of Washington's portrait artists, Gilbert Stuart):
- Prelude: The Portrait Artist
- Part One: The Frontiersman
- Part Two: The Planter
- Part Three: The General
- Part Four: The Statesman
- Part Five: The President
- Part Six: The Legend
From the Prelude (p. XXII):
The goal of this biography is to create a fresh portrait of Washington that will make him real, credible, and charismatic in the same way that he was perceived by his contemporaries. By gleaning anecdotes and quotes from myriad sources, especially from hundreds of eyewitness accounts, I have tried to make him vivid and immediate, rather than the lifeless waxwork he has become for many Americans, and thereby elucidate the secrets of his uncanny ability to lead a nation. His unerring judgment, sterling character, rectitude, steadfast patriotism, unflagging sense of duty, and civic-mindedness - these exemplary virtues were achieved only by his ability to subdue the underlying volatility of his nature and direct his entire psychological makeup to the single-minded achievement of a noble cause.