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The Washington Family
Edward Savage1789-1796
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
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.
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Details
- Title: The Washington Family
- Creator: Edward Savage
- Date Created: 1789-1796
- Physical Dimensions: overall: 213.6 x 284.2 cm (84 1/8 x 111 7/8 in.) framed: 247.7 x 316.2 x 15.2 cm (97 1/2 x 124 1/2 x 6 in.)
- Provenance: The artist;[1] purchased from his estate, 14 November 1820, by Ethan Allen Greenwood [1779-1856], Boston;[2] sold 1839 to Moses Kimball [1809-1895], Boston, with the contents of the New England Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts;[3] sold December 1891 to (Samuel P. Avery, Jr., New York);[4] sold 1892 to William Frederick Havemeyer [1850-1913], New York.[5] National Democratic Club, New York;[6] sold 15 December 1922 to (Art House, Inc., New York);[7] Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York; his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1940 to NGA. [1] Ethan Allen Greenwood, John R. Penniman, and William M.S. Doyle, "Inventory of the estate of Edward Savage, late of Princeton in the County of Worcester deceased, lying and being in Boston in the County of Suffolk," 12 September 1817, no. 51 (with his paintings of Christopher Columbus and Liberty). This inventory of the contents of Savage's museum in Boston is filed with the inventory of his property in Princeton and his administrator's accounts at the Worcester County Probate Court, Worcester, Massachusetts (photocopy, NGA curatorial file, photocopy courtesy of Georgia Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester), series A, case 52130; see Louisa Dresser, "Edward Savage, 1761-1817," _Art in America_ 40, no. 4 (Autumn 1952), 157-158, n. 5, and Georgia Brady Barnhill, "'Extracts from the Journals of Ethan A. Greenwood': Portrait Painter and Museum Proprietor," _Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_ 103, part 1 (October 1993), 97. [2] Bill of sale signed by Savage's son Edward Savage, Jr. (1795-1858), Boston, administrator of his father's estate; Ethan Allen Greenwood Papers, American Antiquarian Society (photocopy, NGA curatorial file, courtesy of Georgia Barnhill). The price of $1,000 was for "One Marble Statue of the Venus de Medicis and the large Painting of the Washington Family." On Greenwood see Barnhill 1993, 91-178. [3] Watkins 1917, 127-128; according to Ryan 1915, 1-2, Moses Kimball (1809-1895) bought a large part of the collection of the New England museum when he was "about thirty" and opened the new Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts in 1841. A draft of a document written by Greenwood in 1839, which would have transferred ownership of the museum to Robert Gould Shaw and the Reverend Edward T. Taylor, is in the Ethan Allen Greenwood Papers, American Antiquarian Society, quoted in Barnhill 1993, 101. This transfer did not take place. [4] Letter from Moses Kimball to Samuel P. Avery, Jr., 28 December 1891, confirming the sale, in _Savage's Painting of Washington and Family_ (album, NGA library). Kimball said that the painting, which he owned for more than fifty years, came to him "in the collection of the New England Museum that I purchased." Also in the album is a letter of 23 November 1892 from Charles H. Savage, the artist's grandson, to Avery, giving the history of the painting. [5] "An Old Portrait of the Washington Family," New York Sun, 31 December 1892 (in _Savage's Painting of Washington and Family_, album, NGA library) recounted the painting's history. "From this dismal seclusion [in the Boston Museum] the old painting was recovered by Mr. Samuel P. Avery, Jr., about a year ago, and after a good scrubbing with soap and water and solvent it was brought to this city. Mr. William F. Havemeyer has recently bought it to add to his extensive Museum of Washingtoniana." Havemeyer owned the painting by 3 January 1893, when collector Thomas B. Clarke wrote to Charles Henry Hart asking whether it would be an appropriate loan for the exhibition of retrospective art they were planning for the World's Columbian Exposition; they were on the advisory committee (New York Public Library, Papers of the Columbian Exposition, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.); ultimately the painting was not included in the 1893 exhibition. Havemeyer's dates are in _Who Was Who in America_, Historical volume, 1942, 1:535. [6] Charles Henry Hart, _Edward Savage, Painter and Engraver, and his Unfinished Copper-plate of "The Congress Voting Independence"_, Boston, 1905, 10. [7] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of _Portraits by Early American Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke_, Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). The receipt for payment by Art House, Inc., dated 15 December 1922, is signed on behalf of the National Democratic Club by F. Newlin Price (NGA curatorial file).
- Medium: oil on canvas
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