American School

As Robin Jaffee Frank explains in Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures, miniatures of Washington embodied the “perfect vehicle for expressing personal respect for Washington as the new father figure.”¹ The duality of miniatures, as both intimate keepsakes and functional as brooches and lockets, served as a way for Americans to show their personal deference and public patriotism for the authoritative, but not autocratic, leader they yearned for. Jaffee Frank further illuminates that a proliferation of Washington miniatures were painted following his death and actually spearheaded the enduring trend to use portrait miniatures as a vehicle to express grief.  

The fact that the rectangular format grew in popularity throughout the last decades of the eighteenth century and eclipsed the oval as the dominant miniature shape by 1803 corroborates that this miniature was likely created as a memento to honor the president shortly following his passing in 1799.² By this time, Washington’s likeness had approached icon-like status. The unidentified artist captured the Washingtonian hallmarks of the high forehead and aquiline nose. As most of the artists who painted live studies have been well-documented in his diaries and letters, the artist of this miniature was likely looking to highly circulated print reproductions of oil paintings as his source material.

It is probable that the the artist may have been looking at Gilbert Stuart’s The Athenaeum Portrait, now jointly owned by the National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston, as the basis for this miniature due to the similar composition, emphasis on the face alone, and rendering of the lips. However, the highly animated features of deep eye sockets and an enlarged nose constitute either creative liberties or trademarks of the artist’s style that differ from most representations of the President. The close cropping renders the physiognomy of the subject of America’s first president paramount, while the shading that highlights the facial contours demonstrates the artist’s technical virtuosity, especially impressive given the miniscule scale.

¹ Robin Jaffee Frank, Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2000), p. 107.

² Dale T. Johnson, American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney Collection (New York, Metropolitan Museum on Art, 1990), p. 32.