New book on Washington and art

The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art.
Howard, Hugh (author).
Feb. 2009. 304p. illus. Bloomsbury, hardcover, $26



Review: How fascinating it is to read about the creation and impact of portraits of George Washington, the first U.S. president, after the first African American president was elected on a tidal wave of digital images. Howard, the author of books about architecture and the Founding Fathers, tells the many-chaptered story of Washington’s patient sittings in the “painter’s chair” for his 28 ambitious and observant portraitists. By looking through artists’ eyes, readers gain a new, intimate sense of the dignified and disciplined farmer, general, and president, and learn how Washington “fostered nothing less than the birth of American painting.” And what a cast of striving artists Howard profiles. John Simbert mounts America’s first art exhibit in his Boston home in 1730. Charles Willson Peale, the first to paint Washington, served with him at Valley Forge. Painter John Trumbull creates a series of Revolutionary War paintings, and Gilbert Stuart paints the sensitive, unfinished portrait the world knows best. Presidential iconography is a fertile subject, and Howard’s foundational contribution to the field is as thrilling as it is invaluable.— Donna Seaman