the way it looks, but i like the study because it shows some of the frenzy of the battlefield more than the finished, more polished version. george washington up here was never actually anywhere near general mercer when he was killed. on the other hand, this is the only image we have of george washington of trumbull's in an actual battle scene so i'm kind of glad he threw him in there. when you're commander in chief in a major war, you should be in at least one battle scene, right? so we have him to thank for that. most of us know trumbull because four of his paintings from the history series end up in the rotunda. by the 1830s, george washington is in two of them. the surrender of cornwallis at

yorktown, and this is the more important one, i told you it would get back to the resignation of washington because it's so important, this is his painting of the resignation of george washington to congress in 1783. the cincinnasin syncinc -- cinc. his eyesight is beginning to falter. the fact that it's a much larger canvas, some of the mastery you saw in the earlier paintings is gone, particularly this. it's gone by the time this is finished and installed. but it's still an important document that we can read for lessons of george washington's life. it was intended to be read, although the language, the lexicon for interpreting the language of this painting might be lost to us today.

back in the 1820s, it would have been more obvious to people, for example, that everything to the left of washington represents the domestic of his side of life. to the right is his public hand, you shake hands with your right hand, that's his public life. on the left, the private, domestic life is where you find these young ladies, martha is up in the gallery, of course she wasn't anywhere near there but we want to get her in there. in fact trumbull throws in another major person who wasn't there, james madison is in this group. he wanted to show all the presence of the georgvirginia dy sitting together. monroe was there, washington of course, and jefferson was there because he was a member at the time too. trumbull throws in madison to show that virginians were

running things. as with udon's statue of cincinattus, the cloak means something, he's thrown the cloak. either he's in haste to get the heck out of there because mt. vernon is a couple of miles down the road and it's christmas eve, or it could be because he's throwing off the cloak of leadership, literally the mantle of power. one other thing you can see the subordination of the military to the civilian power here, it's subtle, but this guy is actually higher than washington. washington has center stage. but this guy, charles thompson, sect secretary of commerce, no surprise, the bureaucracy is the power. that's where you go for locating the center of civil authority. then as now. probably in any government.

but come back to this painting later on on other own aer your you can tell any more signs or lessons it has to teach. the grand manner of historical painting starts to subside, replaced by a romantic period of painting. romance, as the name suggests, is supposed to evoke feeling. it's supposed to be looking at emotions, dark or foreboding in the case of this. this is based on thomas sully's image of george washington crossing the delaware. it's so dark and foreboding that the legislature of north carolina who had commissioned it decided not to take it after all, because, you know, it's kind of moody, right? this is even moodier because it was done in the primitive style by a quaker artist, edward hicks, you've seen some of his work, the peaceable kingdom and

so on. the romantic style starts to supplant the grand style. you'll see it throughout the mid-1800s. the epitome, of course, and you would crucify me if i didn't show that, washington crossing the delaware. there's not much i can say except a cute side story, that the first version of it painted actually in dusseldorf, the artist's home at the time in the 1850s was damaged. he sold that off. the one at the met now is actually a second copy. the first copy was destroyed by the royal air force in a raid on dusseldorf during world war ii, which is considered great britain's last revenge for the american revolution. the other really neat thing about this painting is that of course he's playing fast and loose, we're already several decades into this idea that history painting is not archival as much as ennobling, you're supposed to read it for the lessons it has to teach. he has no qualms or scruples

about making stuff up, which makes this a really interesting painting to read, because everything in it was meant to be interpreted for one reason or another. one of the things i like the best about people who have interpreted it is they say this person here, for example, i don't know if you can see it, everyone thinks, partly because of the way she looks but also because of what she's doing, this is actually a woman. everyone in the boat, she's the only one rowing in the right direction. there might be something to that, i don't know. also unlike trumbull and copley, he wasn't very careful about who he populated the boat with. he didn't go around and try to find out who was actually in the boat, or their descendants. sometimes trumbull would paint, like mercer was dead in 1787, he goes to paint the painting, he doesn't have americas mercer so chooses his son.

this artist uses anyone. the boat isn't anything like the boat he would have used. one historian said, if everyone who said he had an ancestor in washington's boat crossing the delaware was counted up, there would be more people than came over on the mayflower. and everyone likes to say they are descended from the mayflower people. i don't know if you guys have seen this, george washington at the battle of mammoth courthouse. why is this a romantic painting? it looks pretty clear-cut. it's highly representational. but the faces that it shows are really, you know, all these guys here, some of them are related, some of them are in anguish. they're retreating from british lines because general charles leigh has told them to retreat and washington comes up from behind the lines and says, what the heck are you doing? everyone is in turmoil except washington. that's precisely the point. that's the emotion that he's calling attention to.

not that washington is excited or upset, which he was. some people, contemporaries, went on record to say this was the only time they remember washington swearing. but he wanted to get across the opposite, that washington is restraining himself. he's seething underneath. but his is the only face, in this very bad reproduction for which i apologize, he's the only one showing restraint. before the end of the 19th century, another strain of history painting is starting to evolve. and it relies very much for its subject matter on the american revolution. it's the genre style which shifts focus to everyday activities and peoples. it coincides with the mechanical means of mass producing illustrated books. the more books in the hands of the common people makes publishers to want consumers to

see themselves in the illustrations. so you find a lot of paintings, like howard pyle did this painting. genre style pertains to history painting. i think i made this up but i think it adheres pretty closely to the truth. it shows everyday people in historical settings or historical figures in everyday settings. here you see everyday people in a historical setting, people watching the battle of bumpinger hill from the rooftops. it's not some grand moment in the battle. it's literally the common soldiers, nameless, anonymous, marching up. some of them are looking at their fallen comrades. how does this compare with the grand style of history painting? well, a century earlier, john trumbull is doing this.

and in this painting, the grand style, everyone here has a biography written about them, trust me. everyone here. none of these guys are anonymous. i picked this as an example, although it has nothing to do with george washington, because it's here in washington, dc. i think we have to, you know, kind of promote washington, dc when we can. it's the boston boys and general gauge, painted by henry bacon in 1875. again, it shows a bunch of young soon to be americans, protesting british soldiers knocking down their snow hills before the american revolution. look for it next time you're at george washington campus. thomas pritchard rossiter paints the washington family at home, a very genre scene. washington is a victorian squire, victorian ideal of

family life. junius brutus stearns. not just a farmer but a benign slave holder. i tried to find out if stearns had a reason for depicting slavery as a benign institution. i wasn't able to determine any of that. john ward dunsmore, washington's last birthday, 1799. washington saying goodbye to his niece who had been living with his adopted step-granddaughter who had been living with them, married off to his nephew. this is the couple that moved into woodlawn down route 1 from mt. vernon today. a genre scene by john ward dunsmore. i include this one partly because it shows george washington. it's a genre scene because it shows washington not in the magisterial sense of

establishing washington, kind of like what we saw with the edward savage, but it shows him in the messy tasks of telling surveyors where to go, and the bureaucrats, the commissioners in the background. this is also in washington, dc, this is in the collection of george washington university. it was done in 1931 as a master's thesis by a student there. this is my favorite. look at it carefully. it's jean leon, paris, stuart's studio, painted circa 1920, paris's homage to gilbert stuart. it's a picture of a painter painting a picture. it doesn't get more behind the scenes than that. i talked about howard pyle, the great illustrator of the genre style.

n.y. would n.c. wyeth was probably his most famous student. this was painted in 1930. why is this a genre painting? washington is doing something pretty historical. but this painting isn't really about washington, is it? if you were up close, you would see that the most delineated, personalized portraits aren't of washington at all, in fact his face is kind of smudged out. it's of the young woman throwing petals at his feet. this is a portrait of a young woman encountering history on a day in 1789. while he was painting this for a bank in trenton, n.c. wyeth took a spill from the scaffolding, had a near-death experience. and during that experience, he dreamt that he met george washington. he recorded in a painting called "in a dream i meet george washington" in 1930. the guy he says is george washington is just some generic revolutionary war figure.

we know he's george washington because of course he's on a horse and wearing a tricorn. that's why i use this painting to help me make the transition to iconography, george washington in iconography. what's so special about the iconographic style? its style is just as representational. its means and effect are more indirect and abstract, because washington is now used as a means to some other ends. unlike portraits, which tell people what washington looked like or history paintings which teach history or in the romantic mode, try to excite moods or imbue more lessons or set pieces more or less to entertain, iconography uses washington as a symbol for something else or uses something else as a symbol for george washington. early on before what anyone knew what washington looked like, kind of from the same era, late 18th century, is the almanac covers.

if you wanted to convey an image of george washington as law give her giver, we know this is julius caesar because more people know what caesar looked like than americans knew what george washington looked like. you know it's some link to the roman republic. i'm going to race through the horatio greenough's famous statue of washington as zeus. i would be remiss not to show it and show some of its iconographic antecedents. the statue of zeus, the famous painting of napoleon, 1811. greenough's is combined with antonio canova's napoleon as mars in london today, 1806. i think greenough's painting has a really interesting career. it was installed in the capital, as we know. people always say, they don't

like its nakedness, its nudeness. they had to remove it. but if that was the reason, you wouldn't move it to the lawn, right? there's a story there. and i'm not prepared to tell the subtext of that story. i do want to move on quickly, i want to make sure we have time, but this is maybe the most -- the part that will tug at your hearts more, because it's something we can all relate to. i introduce it with this, maybe the most famous iconographic image of all, grant wood, the famous regionalist from the midwest in the 1930s. and his parson weems' fable, at least that's the title i have of it. it's ancestor worship. the flip side of that, of course, is debunking myths. if pietism is myth making, then

debunking it is the flip side of the same coin. parity attacks those myth i cic images or icons. what can i say about this? the most noticeable thing about it is of course, it's again that ubiquitous gilbert stuart's head, painted when washington was 64, fully white hair, on the body of an 8-year-old, cutting down his father's tree. parson weems is holding back the curtain on his own invented myth. compare it with charles wilson peal's self portrait, artist in his museum from 1822. in case you don't get the spoof, wood literally frames his composition around the imagery of charles wilson peal's famous

1822 portrait. peal is drawing the curtain bcke on history. like weems' story, it's an artificial fabrication. his specimens are a reality frozen in time. grant wood's washington is static and unchanging like the stuff birds on display. he's the same at 8 as he was at 64. grant wood's other famous image, daughters of revolution, not even daughters of the revolution, he wanted to show how stodgy blue-haired ladies like this can serve as the establishment against the kind of movement that gave birth to the united states in the first place. they are supposed to be the daughters of the american revolution, the dar.

grant wanted to show by 1932 how much they had betrayed that legacy by becoming in turn an establishment against which people like grant wood would be happy to revolt. it's kind of -- he's kind of dissing the dar for their having thrown obstacles in his way. he was commissioned to do some artwork for i believe a church. and this stained glass company who commissioned him to do this work was based in germany. in the years after world war i, to do business with a german company was still considered unpatriotic. they threw bars in his way of executing that commission. this was his payback. you'll see that, again, the equally ubiquitous washington crossing the delaware is in the background. but it's really fading, isn't it? it's a faded legacy of the american revolution. i see -- i haven't read this, but i see these images, they remind me of byzantine icons.

the elong ated necks, which i imagine he wanted to show their other worldliness. robert caldscott paints george washington carver crossing the delaware. he intended it to point out racial stereotypes that are embedded in the american psyche. so you see he paints in george washington carver, steppen fetchit, aunt jemima, et cetera. in his own words, this was his personal statement on the forthcoming bicentennial, 1975. robert shimamora does the same thing, you've probably seen this, it's in the national gallery of american art. same thing. another version of the crossing i wanted to draw attention to in my last minute is larry rivers

from 1953, "the crossing." ail read my notes so i don't stutter and take up time. rivers' 1953 study of the crossing casts a fractured light on historical narrative, myth building, and human nature all together. no one, not even george washington, vaguely emerging as the figure of the horse off center, this is the guy, is readily identifiable. each man moves in his own murky reality, unlike the common cause shown by sailor/soldiers. rivers did this after reading about the chaos of war in the novel "war and peace." whether you agree with these artists' notion of history or of george washington, washington is so famous now he doesn't even need to be in a picture of george washington. we know because it's the crossing and there's a guy on a horse, that george washington is there. the flip side of that is that if

symbols are identified with washington long enough, and they persist long enough, that eventually washington comes to stand for that symbol in turn. and so to demonstrate that, we all know what this painting is, right? you want to talk about the economy, you just throw up a dollar bill and it's george washington. you don't even need to mention his name. again, the economy is doing bad, right? because we identify washingt washington -- this is the athenaeum in reverse, so readily with george washington. we know this is a dollar bill, we don't even need to see the rest. we know the message he's trying to teach. washington is so famous now, he stands in lieu of the eagle. it used to be the eagle was the symbol of america. now he's standing in lieu of the eagle, holding the arrows and the laurel wreaths. i'm going to close with don palec's lincoln after stuart,

done in 2009. this shows the complexity of iconography and how it plays with the mind. we go to look at this and fully expect to see george washington's athenaeum print, it has all the trappings of the image. instead we see lincoln and we do a double take. pollock wanted to demonstrate that not just -- this is how famous washington is, but that each president, washington and lincoln, have a lot in common. they both were major presidents who started historical legacies and their legacies are left unfinished today. and i'll close with the original. q&a. here is your chance. while you're thinking about q&a, i have these lovely pins that

fit on your lapel. i don't know where i got them. the first of the two goes to someone who can tell me where the other landsdown is in washington, dc. i saw your hand first, sir. >> rayburn room? >> is it an original? >> it's one of the copies. >> i mean it was done by gilbert stuart? see, that's the thing. all the paintings i know of, particularly in the office buildings, much less -- i mean, much less the capital, are copies of these copies. i might have to stop you on that one. then i saw this lady. ma'am? >> the white house. >> that is a landsdown, good for you. you know what? my point was -- how can i forget the white house? of course. it was the first work of art -- it's good to see you.

it's at george washington university, i'm promoting my own school. they have one that's called the monroe lennox, they're named for their original owners. and they have one, surprisingly enough. >> a three quarter view? >> no, i think it's a full one. i may have to look again. you know the one i'm talking about. >> but when they took down the landsdown at the portrait gallery, they replaced it with a three quarter. >> from gw? >> a private collection. >> oh, okay. before i give out the other one, give me time to think of another question. do you guys have any questions for me? ma'am? >> do you have any commentary on national gallery of art paintings? >> of washington? since we're talking about washington. let's stick with the washington. i mentioned the athenaeum is there, both of george and martha. the landsdown is there. i don't know what other ones are there. i suspect they have quite a few.

but no, i couldn't tell you. you're reminding me i need to go back. >> what about the portrait gallery? >> i'm sorry, the portrait gallery. sir? >> you mentioned that gilbert stuart used this one painting as a model for others. how long would it have taken him to crank out another one of these, the turnaround time to sell it? >> of course our friend in the senate curator's office just left. she would have been ideally suited to answer that question. i don't know how long it took to turn around. i know that in the period, the thing that the master really had to take care of was the face and the hands. everything else was covered by clothing. you would get other people in your studio who were studying under you to do those. so you could turn them around fairly quickly. in other words, the master isn't responsible for everything you see on the canvas. i don't know how quick they spit them out, but there were 75

athenaeums floating around out there, i imagine it could be done pretty expeditiously. sir? >> you may have covered this. what are your thoughts on the martha washington portrait in the east room? >> the one that's kind of append ant to the landsdown? i don't have much thought about it, it's later. it's done during that -- the really early colonial revival style, late 1800s. without even having a clear mental image of it, i can tell you this, she never wore those clothes. >> they were late 1870s clothes. >> very victorian. bear that in mind when you see it, sometimes these people are shown wearing things that have no relation to reality or fact. >> speaking of that, the very first picture by peal, he's

wearing a -- >> sash, uh-huh. >> and then a few pictures later he's wearing a different one, painted more deeply. is that braddock's battle sash that at least flexner says he wore in every battle? i've never seen in any of the commentary about any of these portraits, i've never seen anybody say anything about the sashes. >> my sense is that the blue sash, the diagonal blue sash he wears as commander in chief. i don't know where -- that would be according to a very specific rule about what the uniforms look like. we all know washington was a stickler for the rules. i don't know if he made up the rule and that he incorporated a braddock sash. i have a feeling that it might be a sash further down, maybe a waist, sort of a waist one. but i know the blue one, anyway,

either because washington said it should be so, or he was told to make it so, is the sash he wears as commander in chief. and it would be interesting to know its connection with braddock. >> another question, how do you think it was that we see all these other pictures and especially peal, he painted, he tended to make a smooth face of everybody he painted. how did edward savage figure out that he really looked like george c. scott? an entirely different kind of face. >> i don't know. now, we all know peal, right? not a lot of people know edward savage, and it sounds like you're suggesting there's some unfairness in that, because savage is maybe more realistic. maybe he's just -- simply because he's more rustic. a lot of these primitives, i'm a huge fan of american primitive folk art, primitive art. i think it shows realities and

truths we miss. when we see a nice smooth face like the peals, we think that that's the better piece. you're reminding all of us, don, some of the deeper truths, particularly by human character, can come out with someone who looks with the eye of a less educated, let's say, less academic artist like savage. by the way, i should say, savage was john wesley vjarvis's teacher. and jarvis thought he was the worst artist who was, he hated the fact that he was associated with him as a student. now, i'm not a huge fan of jarvis, so that makes perfect sense to me that he would feel that way. >> you didn't show the painting that the masons commissioned and have i think in alexandria, where he really does look like

an old man, but not like george c. scott. >> i'm getting all confused now. so is that good or bad? >> it's a very realistic portrait of an old man. >> when was it done? >> in his last years. i understand it was commissioned by the masons. he looks like a tired old guy. >> we know particularly towards the end of his presidency, that he's not the teflon president that he was. and that's unfair too, teflon suggests people are throwing stuff at you and it doesn't stick. no one was throwing anything at him for the first several years of his administration. it's only later with the jay treaty and the friction between the anglophiles and the franc francophiles. if you take up arms against your

own people, you're fair game, so he became just another politician towards the end. frankly i don't think it was a role he had studied how to play, and he didn't play it well. so that's a good point. when you're looking at portra s portraits, see, is this a tired old man, is this someone who is really optimistic and hopeful? maybe he just wants to go back to the plantation. we know he had a rebirth when he went back to the plantation because of what he says. he was at root a squire, a businessman, a very entrepreneurial businessman with his bills and his experimental farms and barnes. he was a farmer. i imagine he got a boost of energy when he went back in 1798. yeah, those pictures from the tail end of his second administration are devastating. look at obama. my god, the man started out, you know, and now he's gray hair. i know gray hair. it doesn't have to look bad. some people.

other questions? bruce? >> you talked about the unfinished george and martha. and how, you know, if he finished it, they actually got it. it seems they would have had to put these artists up for days. >> yes. >> and then the artist tries to sell them prints if you're one of the little faces. did the sitters get anything for these portraits? >> no. it was largesse. it's another one of these nobles noblesse oblige things they did. i don't get that sense of george washington, either from diary entries i've read, where he says, another artist took up three hours of my time today. it was very time consuming. washington for one didn't appreciate it. but bear in mind, this is the guy who abiding by rules of

hospitality at the time, while he describsubscribed, would put. udon describes his experience getting the cast for washington's head for the bust that's now at mt. vernon. it wasn't just washington sitting there. washington, you probably know the story, was covered with plaster, breathed through straws for a long time. i mean, if you're claustrophic like me, that's not going to go, but washington did it, because udon crossed the atlantic in order to do it. so you submitted graciously, hopefully. any other questions? peter, nothing? yes. >> i think the portrait that this gentleman spoke about, i saw it several years ago at the george washington masonic memorial. and what i remember about it is

that it was said that it's the only portrait where his youthful pockmarks were shown in the painting. >> wow. is that what you're thinking, don? that's one of the reasons why it looks so real. of course he had the pocks eapo in life, it saved his life because he was immune to it later in life. i never looked for those pockmarks. i would imagine there was an unwritten rule that you didn't draw attention to them in a portrait, just like you didn't show fdr's disabilities. but of course we know now that's what makes you human, sometimes makes you a better humans. there's some books for sale that we have back stocked that we're happy to move at various types of discounts that deal with george washington based on book talks that have been given in the last several months. so please take those, and if you do have any other questions, feel free to e-mail me.

and be looking for future book talks, not just in august. we do have them throughout the year. we're always happy to see you guys shown up in the dead of summer. so thanks for coming by. [ applause ] [ indistinct conversation ] friday night, american history tv in prime time continues with visits to archives, museums, and historic sites. at 8:00 p.m., programs on the pearl harbor attack and memorials. then a look at world war ii aircraft, and president woodrow wilson. and later, a tour of the ellis island immigration museum and the history of african-americans in congress. american artifacts, 8:00 p.m.

eastern here on c-span3. tonight, book tv in prime time features politicians on "after words." at 8:00 p.m., senate majority leader mitch mcconnell on his memoir, "the long game." then retiring california senator barbara boxer. then j.c. watts on his book, "dig deep." politicians on "after words" at 8:00 p.m. eastern, friday on book tv on c-span2. ♪ the presidential inauguration of donald trump is friday, january 20th.