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Jefferson Davis

George Lethbridge Saunders1849

Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery

Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery
Washington, D.C., United States

While traveling in the United States in 1849, English-born artist George L. Saunders painted this miniature of the future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. At the time, Davis was a senator representing Mississippi. A few years afterward, a contemporary recorded this impression of Davis: "His slender, tall and erect figure, his spare face, keen eyes and fine forehead . . . presented the well-known strong American type. There was in his bearing a dignity which seemed entirely natural and unaffected, that kind of dignity which does not invite familiar approach but will not render one uneasy by lofty assumptions."

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Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery

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