Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
The Painter's Chair (19 page)
The Secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson, arrived on April 14, 1789, to read him the Senate president’s letter informing
him of his official election. Ever conscious of propriety, Washington had drafted an acceptance speech. He read it to Thomson
as they stood, face to face, in the New Room, the grandest space at Mount Vernon.
Two days later Washington embarked on a week-long journey to the nation’s capital in New York. Along the way he was met at
almost every hamlet and crossroad by speeches, parades, toasts, banquets, and huzzahs. In Philadelphia alone twenty thousand
people turned out to cheer the new president, who, mounted on a white charger, passed beneath a celebratory arch of triumph
designed by Charles Willson Peale.
Washington was sworn in as the nation’s first president on April 30, 1789, though even in the days before, he confided his
reluctance to a friend. He wrote to his old artillery commander, General Henry Knox (soon to become his secretary of war),
“My movement to the Chair of Government, will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the
place of his execution.”
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As the year 1789 ended, Washington was peopling his cabinet, delegating responsibilities to able men (Hamilton had accepted
treasury with alacrity, though Jefferson remained coy about the office of secretary of state). He worried over his advancing
age. Though not yet fifty-eight, the previous summer he had been forced to consider his mortality when a persistent fever
and a growth on his thigh had meant surgery. The procedure to remove the large tumor required a deep incision, without anesthesia.
At the time, Washington told Dr. Samuel Bard, “I am not afraid to die and therefore can bear the worst.” Almost as soon as
he returned to work (he spent forty days reclining painfully on a settee, unable to sit at his desk) word reached him of his
mother’s death of cancer of the breast.
TRUMBULL WAS A man on a mission, and he seemed to be progressing nicely toward his objective.
His completed canvases for the two battles early in the war were at hand, together with his
Declaration
, a work in progress. Three other American history paintings were under way too, each commemorating a well-remembered victory.
The first,
The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton
, would portray the victorious General Washington at Trenton on the morning after the nighttime crossing of the Delaware on
December 26, 1776. In the second,
The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton
, Mercer’s horse has been shot from beneath him, and, his sword raised, he attempts to defend himself against a British grenadier
poised to deliver the mortal wound with his bayonet. Washington is at center, in the middle distance, where the battle rages.
Mercer will die, but Washington, with a fearless disregard for his own safety, will lead his men to a crucial victory. The
third canvas,
The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown
, depicts the British forces marching between two lines of the victorious American troops under Washington’s watchful gaze.
While still in Eu rope, Trumbull had sought out Rochambeau, Lafayette, and other French officers and recorded them for
Yorktown
, just as he had done with Jefferson and Adams for his
Declaration.
Now, back in America, he desired a variety of other American likenesses, too. After a visit to his family in Connecticut (during
which he worked in India ink at a sketch for
Trenton
) he returned to New York in the company of his brother Jonathan, a member of their state’s delegation to Congress.
With the House of Representatives in session, Trumbull was able to begin recording elder statesmen and some of the military
personages who had fought at the battles he was putting on canvas. With the graying of the Founding Fathers (fourteen Signers
were already dead), Trum-bull had grown “fully sensible of the precariousness as well as the value of many other lives,” so
he worked as quickly as he could.
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But the figure he needed most of all—for
Princeton
,
Trenton
, and
Yorktown—
was General Washington on horse back.
On January 14 a dinner invitation brought Trumbull back to Cherry Street, where he was the president’s guest along with two
senators and nine members of the House of Representatives (including his brother). Although he was the only guest not in the
government, he managed to advance the cause of his historic work by returning the kind invitation of his host and hostess,
asking them to do him the honor of inspecting his paintings. The following week, on January 23, Washington recorded in his
diary, “Went with Mrs. Washington in the forenoon to see the Paintings of Mr. Jno. Trumbull.” Washington liked what he saw,
and that very day Trumbull went public with his project.
In a New York newspaper,
Gazette of the United States
, the artist announced his plan to print thirteen engravings.
39
Having agreed to lend his likeness, Washington assumed the Painter’s Chair for Trum-bull for the first time on Wednesday,
February 20, noting in his diary, “Sat from 9 until 11 o’clock for Mr. Trumbull to draw my picture in his historical pieces.”
They resumed that Friday, then had three more sessions the following week. Work slowed slightly as the Washingtons moved housekeeping
to 39 Broadway. With its two drawing rooms, the much larger Macomb House better suited the family’s entertaining needs. Washington
received diplomats, politicians, and other visitors at the weekly Presidential Levees on Tuesday afternoons, while Martha
greeted ladies and gentlemen for more casual conversation at Drawing Room Receptions Friday evenings. There was even space
for a Painting Room for Trumbull when he came to work.
For the March 1 session, they varied the process. “Exercised on horseback this forenoon,” noted Washington in his diary, “attended
by Mr. John Trumbull, who wanted to see me mounted.” Trumbull was closing in on what he needed, and on April 2 he published
a broadside that described in full his big project and solicited buyers. He needed subscribers to underwrite the production
costs of the engraving. The artist and di Poggi had commissioned Johann Gotthard von Müller of Stuttgart, Germany, to commence
work on the plate for
Bunker’s Hill
, a deal that had been reached before Trumbull returned the previous fall. The cost would be more than a thousand guineas,
and Trumbull hoped that people would order in advance, putting money down and enabling him to commission more engravings as
he completed the paintings.
Trumbull waited. When, after three days, he had received no subscriptions, he experienced what he himself described as “a
fit of the Dumps.”
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His spirits rebounded when the first orders did arrive and, in the days thereafter, his subscription list came to include
the names of the president, vice president, New York’s Governor George Clinton, and various senators and representatives.
Emboldened by the sales and his ten painting sessions with Washington, Trumbull went off to Philadelphia for two months, looking
to collect both missing likenesses for his
Declaration
and to solicit additional subscribers.
WHEN TRUMBULL RETURNED, he prevailed upon Washington again, and on July 6, Washington wrote in his diary entry, “I sat for
Mr. Trumbull to finish my pictures in some of his historical pieces.” After a fashion—both men were reserved—they had become
friends. As a student of the world, Washington found the well-traveled artist an informative and thoughtful companion. Trumbull
appreciated that, during the time spent with Washington, he had been the recipient of “many civilities which added the endearment
and affection of personal feelings to the reverential respect which his public character always commanded from all men.”
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Trumbull also recognized that the best way to thank Washington for his time and trouble was to gratify Mrs. Washington.
With her husband’s cooperation Trumbull began work on a canvas that, though small, portrayed a full-length image of Washington.
In a sense, it was to be a painted-from-life version of his London portrait a decade earlier, only this time he didn’t have
to work from memory or imagination. He now knew the look of this man intimately, after having watched him at his own table
managing a roomful of politicians. He had studied his maneuvers on horseback, seeing for himself the grace and ease with which
Washington rode. While remaining somewhat in awe of him, Trumbull had come to know Washington as a social peer. Trumbull had
seen Washington at war and in government; he had observed him charming the ladies and listening in stony silence to the words
of his advisers.
For his gift to Martha, Trumbull chose to paint Washington not on horseback but standing beside a tall white steed. He selected
as his backdrop Verplanck’s Point on the Hudson River, some thirty miles above New York, where King’s Ferry linked New England
and the colonies to the south. It had been a strategic site during the Revolution when the British held New York, but Trumbull
rendered it as a quiet waterscape on a low horizon. In Trumbull’s
Trenton
,
Princeton
, and
Yorktown
scenes, Washington was one officer among many. In this portrait nothing would distract from Mrs. Washington’s husband.
As he had with his histories, Trumbull took great pains with the minutiae of Washington’s military dress. He always accumulated
research, working from detailed sketches and notes regarding the landscape, the soldiers, and their equipment. This time,
with Washington front and center, he could concentrate on such details as the uniform buttons, the spurs, and the straps and
buckles on the horse furniture. He was able to paint from one of Washington’s actual uniforms. (Once a soldier, always a soldier:
In his first public appearance after recovering from his surgery he had come to the door of his Cherry Street house on July
4, 1789, dressed “in a suit of regimentals.”)
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Still, it was the man, not his uniform or other accouterments, that made this painting an instant heirloom, one that Martha
would leave as a specific bequest to a granddaughter and that would later pass from one family hand to another. The artist
signed his named simply—“
J. Trumbull
|
1790
”—before presenting the canvas, as he said, “
con amore . . .
as an offering of grateful respect . . . to Mrs. Washington.”
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He had succeeded in rendering on canvas better than anyone the latent physical power of Washington.
EVEN BEFORE TRUMBULL completed the gift for Martha, the painting won the plaudits of others. Mayor Richard Varick was among
its admirers, and he decided New York needed its own
George Washington
. Only his desire was less modest in scale: The big city needed a life-size version, he told Trumbull. The painting he commissioned
would stand nine feet tall and six feet wide.