Washington [350]
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
A Masterly Hand
FOR A MAN WHO EMPHASIZED HIS DISCOMFORT when posing for artists, George Washington dedicated an extraordinary amount of time to having his likeness preserved for posterity. As shown by his constant attention to his papers, he guarded his fame with vigilance. Sensitive to charges of self-promotion—charges that seemed to ring in his ears alone—he preferred sitting for artists when he could cite a plausible political excuse for doing so. Such was the case in the late summer of 1783, when Congress commissioned an equestrian statue of him and gave the prestigious assignment to artist Joseph Wright, who had the perfect pedigree to appease Washington’s strict conscience. His mother, Patience Wright, a Quaker sculptor from Philadelphia, specialized in waxwork portraits. While mother and son were based in wartime London, she had patented a unique form of espionage by relaying secret messages to Benjamin Franklin and American politicians at home through messages sealed inside her waxed heads.
After studying with Benjamin West in London, Joseph Wright returned to America and received the coveted commission for the Washington statue. He began with an oil portrait of the general that many deemed “a better likeness of me than any other painter has done,” Washington conceded.1 Washington was then residing at Rocky Hill, outside Princeton, giving him time for this diversion. Protective of his image and afraid of appearing pretentious, Washington rebuffed Wright’s request that he don a Roman toga. As a result, the painting is plain and powerfully realistic, showing a uniformed but unadorned Washington who eschews the standard props of power. Wright caught the weighty toll that the war years had exacted on Washington, whose face is long, gaunt, and devoid of animation; his eyes lack sparkle or luster. The nose is thick and straight and blunter than in earlier portraits. As Washington commented justly about Wright’s style, “His forte seems to be in giving the distinguishing characteristics with more boldness than delicacy.”2 The painting also pinpointed an important quirk of Washington’s face: the lazy right eye that slid off into the corner while the left eye stared straight ahead.
To prepare for the equestrian statue, Wright crafted a life mask of Washington’s face with plaster of paris. Cooperating with artists brought out a certain drollery in Washington, and work on the mask led to a charming comic vignette with Martha Washington. As Washington recalled, the artist “oiled my features over, and, placing me flat upon my back upon a cot, proceeded to daub my face with the plaster. Whilst [I was] in this ludicrous attitude, Mrs. Washington entered the room, and, seeing my face thus overspread with the plaster, involuntarily exclaimed [in alarm]. Her cry excited in me a disposition to smile, which gave my mouth a slight twist . . . that is now observable in the bust which Wright afterward made.”3 Although Wright constructed the preparatory bust, he never completed the equestrian statue.
Another eminent artist with a special claim to Washington’s time was Robert Edge Pine, who had lived near George William and Sally Fairfax in Bath, England. A vocal supporter of American independence, Pine had consulted the Fairfaxes about a controversial print Pine executed showing the “oppressions and calamities of America” and portraying Washington as the country’s heroic liberator, as George William informed Washington.4 It was a courageous action for an artist with a wife and six daughters and earned him “so many enemies in this selfish nation that he is compelled to go to America to seek bread in his profession.” 5 There was no way Washington could reject an artist who kept alive the link with George William and Sally Fairfax.
On April 28, 1785, Pine arrived