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Washington is elegantly attired in military garb holding his sword as a reference to his role as an officer.

This scene shows Washington at Princeton, New Jersey where the revolutionary army won a victory in 1777.

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Charles Wilson Peale and Charles Peale Polk

George Washington at Princeton, about 1788

oil on canvas

32 x 29 in.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas H. Noyes

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Charles Willson Peale was born in Chester, Maryland.  He began his career by apprenticing to a saddler and woodcarver in Annapolis and eventually went into the saddling trade.  Peale his first painting lessons from John Hesselius and then studied with Benjamin West in London.  After serving in the Continental Army from 1775-1778, Peale settled in Philadelphia.  He painted the portraits of numerous revolutionary heroes, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.  Peale married three times and fathered 17 children, many of whom became important artists, including his sons Raphaelle, James, Rembrandt, Rubens, Franklin and Titian Ramsay Peale.  This dynasty of painters produced portraits, still life and landscape paintings.  Besides being one of the country’s foremost American artists during the revolutionary period, Peale was also a harness maker, upholsterer, watch and clock maker, sign painter, silversmith, scientist, inventor, taxidermist and archeologist. Charles Peale Polk was Peale’s orphaned nephew.  Polk learned how to paint from his uncle and earned a living as a portrait artist and commercial sign painter.  He specialized in portraits of revolutionary heroes that included George Washington, General Lafayette and Benjamin Franklin. Polk often made copies of these portraits to sell and even copied his uncle’s painting of George Washington more than 50 times.

For George Washington at Princeton, Charles Willson Peale most likely painted the general’s head and chest, leaving the rest of the canvas’s execution to his nephew and student, Charles Peale Polk.  Washington’s dignified self-assured appearance is very similar to Peale’s “Constitutional Convention” portrait painted from life in 1787, and on which a popular print was based.   This scene, however, shows General Washington in his Continental Army uniform standing before Princeton, New Jersey, where the Revolutionary army won a victory in 1777.  Polk repeated the Princeton portrait numerous times, always emphasizing the dark blue figure by means of the light green and pink background. 

Reference

Edgar Richardson.  Charles Willson Peale and his World, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1983. ISBN-13: 978-0810914780

Linda Crocker.  Charles Peale Polk 1786-1882: A Limner and His Likenesses, Washington, D. C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1881. ASIN: B000PT3B0C