George Washington

As the central hero of the American Revolution, George Washington (1732-1799) in his final years became a national icon of nearly mythic proportions. Already in his lifetime, images of him were in great demand, and their popularity remained unabated well into the nineteenth century. In the portrait here, Washington, dressed in his buff and blue Continental Army uniform with three stars on its epaulets, stands in a blustery, cloud-filled landscape with Princeton's Nassau Hall visible in the distance. The detail alludes to his triumph at the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777, the first substantial American victory of the Revolution. The nephew of famed painter Charles Willson Peale, the Baltimore folk artist Charles Peale Polk made a specialty of portraits of Washington, painting scores of images of the great general during the early 1790s. The Chrysler's portrait is among the finest of these.

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