This group portrait represents George Washington’s military, political, and family life. The president, in a Revolutionary War uniform, rests his hand on a plan for Washington, DC, the site for the new US capital. His wife, first lady Martha Washington, and her grandchildren join him at their Virginia plantation estate, Mount Vernon.
Research now suggests that the figure standing just outside the family group is Christopher Sheels, an enslaved attendant to the president. Unlike the four family members, Sheels is painted in shadow. Old damage to the paint makes it even harder to see his face clearly. Sheels’s presence signals that the president’s household depended on the labor of enslaved people, as did the economy of the young nation.