The Painter's Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art
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Overview
"I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck ... no dray moves more readily to the Thill, than I do to the Painters Chair." - George Washington, 16, 1785
When George Washington was born, the New World had virtually no artists. Over the course of his life, a cultural transformation would occur. Virtually everyone regarded Washington as America’s indispensable man, and the early painters and sculptors were no exception. Hugh Howard surveys the founding fathers of American painting through their portraits of Washington. Charles Willson Peale was the comrade-in-arms, John Trumbull the aristocrat, Benjamin West the mentor, and Gilbert Stuart the brilliant wastrel. Their images of Washington fed an immense popular appetite that has never faded, Stuart’s image endures today on the $1 bill. The Painter’s Chair is an eloquent narrative of how America’s first painters toiled to create an art worthy of the new republic, and the hero whom they turned into an icon.
A fresh new look at the beginnings of the American republic-through the portraits of its first icon, George Washington, and the painters who defined his image
THE WASHINGTON APPEAL: History readers have shown an insatiable interest in George Washington, and in The Painter’s Chair Hugh Howard gives those readers a new way of understanding one of our most enigmatic presidents.
FOUNDING FATHERS OF AMERICAN PAINTING: While the reputation of American art has gained luster, it’s early years are still often ignored. Howard shows how a group of portraitists established a national artistic tradition, just as those other founding fathers established a political one.
HOUSE AUTHOR WITH NEWFOUND SUCCESS: Hugh Howard’s Houses of the Founding Fathers has been an enormous commercial success, selling roughly 30,000 copies since November and establishing him as a recognized expert on colonial art and architecture.
"What a smart, elegantly conceived book this is! Hugh Howard and photographer Roger Strauss III walk us through the homes of our Founding Fathers, transporting us back in time. A real treasure!"
"Howard argues convincingly that Kimball and Jefferson were the Boswell and Johnson of American architecture. Their conversation managed to leap over two centuries of separation and establish, for the first time, the origins of an indigenous American architectural style. And speaking of style, this book truly has it."
Howard’s narrative is particularly compelling as he takes us through the decades of efforts that went into Jefferson’s laboratory of architectural experimentation-his country home, Monticello
- Title: The Painter's Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art
- Author: Hugh Howard
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
- Print Publication Date: 2009
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 320
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781608191918, 9781596912441, 1596912448, 1608191915
- Resource ID: LLS:9781608191918
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T15:19:56Z
Hugh Howard's numerous books include Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson; the definitive Thomas Jefferson, Architect; his memoir House-Dreams; and most recently the very successful Houses of the Founding Fathers. He resides in upstate New York with his wife, writer Elizabeth Lawrence, and their two teenage daughters.