The Lansdowne Portrait

George Washington stands in a black suit beside a table covered with books, papers and a writing set. One hand extends into the space before him; the other rests at his sword. Above and around the figure, columns, drapery and a distant rainbow turn a portrait into a statement about government. Gilbert Stuart painted this full-length image in 1796, during Washington’s second presidential term, for a gift from William and Anne Willing Bingham to the British statesman known as Lord Lansdowne. ^[1]

The original is now in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, as NPG.2001.13 . Its history crosses the Atlantic twice: first as a personal and diplomatic gift sent to London, then as a long-term museum loan eventually acquired for the American collection. Other paintings and engravings spread its composition. Distinguishing those versions is essential, especially because the Washington saved from the President’s House in 1814 was a different canvas. ^{[2] [3]}

A gift across the Atlantic

The picture’s name comes from its recipient. William Petty had been Earl of Shelburne before becoming first Marquess of Lansdowne. His political relationship with the United States reached back to the negotiations that ended the American Revolution. The portrait offered an image of the former commander as president to a British statesman associated with peace and a continuing interest in Anglo-American relations. It was intended to travel, and its destination formed part of its meaning from the beginning. ^[1]

That journey complicates the idea of a national portrait made only for a national audience. Stuart represented the American president through a visual language recognizable to European viewers. The large figure, architectural setting and richly furnished foreground gave Washington a scale of public presence familiar from portraits of powerful figures abroad. Yet the dress and surrounding objects directed that presence toward a particular office and a particular republic. The painting had to establish distinction while remaining intelligible across political and cultural differences. ^[13]

The finished, framed canvas was shipped to England in November 1796. Lansdowne’s response, quoted by Ellen G. Miles in the 2004 Stuart catalogue, thanked Anne Willing Bingham and praised both the likeness and the gift. Its reception in London also entered the press. A report in the Oracle and Public Advertiser in May 1797 treated the image as an impressive representation of Washington’s appearance and public bearing. ^[14]

The London destination should remain distinct from the setting inside the painting. Lansdowne House was a real place in which the portrait was received; the columns, furniture and openings on Stuart’s canvas make a composed scene. A later historical photograph of the house supplies context for the work’s destination, without showing either the portrait’s original hanging position or the building exactly as it appeared in 1796. The photograph reproduced in John Swarbrick’s 1915 book belongs to that later architectural record. ^[15]

Stuart’s painting also had a future beyond the recipient’s house. Replicas and prints began to detach the composition from its original transaction. The grand standing Washington could serve patrons with different relationships to the president and could reach viewers who would never see the original. Its diplomatic beginning and later public familiarity are connected histories, but the fame of the image should not erase the specific gift that brought the first canvas into being. ^[4]

William and Anne Willing Bingham and Lansdowne

William Bingham was a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and a United States senator. He and his wife had spent time in London and maintained relationships with Lansdowne and a wider transatlantic circle of merchants, financiers and statesmen. Their gift belonged within those connections. Miles places the commission beside Bingham’s interest in trade with Britain and his negotiations concerning extensive land investments in Maine. Admiration for Washington operated alongside private commercial interests and political alliances. ^[16]

Anne Willing Bingham was an active participant in the commission. She helped secure Washington’s willingness to sit, and the surviving appointment letter identifies her as the intermediary. Lansdowne directed his grateful response to her. Naming only her husband as commissioner would lose evidence of how the portrait was arranged and understood by the people involved. The painting’s social history includes the work of persuasion and personal connection as well as the payment recorded in an account book. ^{[1] [17]}

The first initiative is less certain. Later accounts describe Lansdowne ordering a full-length portrait and Bingham seeking the honour of presenting it; Stuart’s own draft account instead emphasizes an invitation from Bingham. Miles discusses these differences rather than choosing a perfectly documented origin story. What can be stated securely is that the painting became the Binghams’ gift to Lansdowne. The uncertainty concerns how the arrangement began, not Anne’s participation or the portrait’s eventual destination. ^[1]

The political setting was particularly charged. John Jay negotiated a treaty with Britain in 1794, addressing unresolved questions of trade and relations between the two countries. Its ratification and implementation produced intense debate in the United States. Bingham supported the treaty, while his dealings with British investors made the stability of transatlantic relations important to his own affairs. The portrait was commissioned amid those overlapping public and private concerns. ^[16]

Lansdowne’s earlier support for peace gave the gift a longer historical frame. As Shelburne, he had helped bring the war with America toward a negotiated conclusion. The new image presented Washington through the authority he exercised after military victory: elected civilian leadership. A portrait given between these circles could acknowledge the past while imagining a useful continuing relationship. Its symbolism is therefore more specific than a general tribute to an admired man. ^[16]

Washington in civilian ceremonial dress

The black suit is one of the composition’s clearest decisions. Washington appears as president rather than in the uniform familiar from portraits of him as commander of the Continental Army. The white ruffles at neck and wrists introduce bright, intricate passages within the large dark figure. His dress is formal and carefully presented, but it signals civilian public life. The sword participates in that ceremonial appearance rather than turning the scene into an episode of combat. ^[18]

Stuart gives the coat considerable pictorial weight. Its dark shape establishes the torso and descends through the standing figure, set against the warmer curtain and furnishings. The pale face and hands become prominent points within that arrangement. The effect is particularly clear when the whole portrait is viewed at a distance: the head establishes identity, while the hands indicate action and connect the figure to the space around him.

The face relates closely to the Athenaeum portrait , another Washington likeness developed in 1796. Miles describes the Lansdowne head as based on that image, with a different direction of gaze. The relationship shows how a convincing likeness could be carried into a much larger construction. Painting the standing body, hands, clothes and setting posed additional problems beyond recording Washington’s features. ^[18]

The comparison also reveals how format changes the encounter. In the unfinished Athenaeum canvas, the developed head sits within broad preliminary passages and exposed support. Lansdowne gives the face a completed public environment. Its scale draws the viewer into a space organized around the president, while the accessories extend the image’s account of him beyond what a face alone could communicate. The two paintings share a likeness without offering the same experience.

Stuart’s treatment of dress belongs to a larger tradition of representing office through selected signs. Washington does not need a visible battlefield to recall military command, nor does his public stature depend on wearing a crown. Instead, the portrait combines the man’s recognizable features with ceremonial clothing, a controlled gesture and objects associated with the history and institutions of the United States. The portrait’s claims emerge from that combination. ^{[13] [18]}

Gesture, sword and presidential authority

Washington’s extended hand opens the composition toward an audience beyond the painted scene. The arm reaches across the darker figure into a lighter surrounding area, making the gesture easy to read. The other hand, at the sword, provides a contrasting downward connection. Between them, the body holds a stable position. The two arms organize different kinds of action: address and composure, outward engagement and contained physical presence.

Miles relates the oratorical pose to Washington’s address to Congress on 8 December 1795, which included support for the Jay Treaty. This interpretation gains force from the commission’s political circumstances and a contemporary London description of the image. It remains an interpretation of how the portrait evokes public action, rather than proof that Stuart recorded the president at one precisely observed moment of speaking. ^[19]

The distinction is especially important for the Farewell Address. Washington’s famous address was published, not delivered by him as a speech to Congress. Describing this painting as a literal illustration of its delivery gives the gesture a false historical occasion. The portrait can invoke the president’s leadership, the difficulties of government and the prospect of retirement without becoming an eyewitness image of that text being spoken. ^[19]

The sword similarly requires attention to context. Miles describes it as used ceremonially in this setting, alongside the black public dress. Its presence retains a connection with Washington’s military standing, but the portrait’s dominant activity is civic address. The figure is neither advancing nor drawing the weapon. The hilt and scabbard contribute another vertical and diagonal rhythm within the standing pose, visually linking the hand, coat and lower part of the picture. ^[18]

The image’s authority is constructed through these relationships rather than located in one emblem. The large scale gives Washington bodily presence; the balanced stance steadies him; the extended arm makes an audience imaginable; and the surrounding objects situate his role in a history of institutions and events. Looking at the gesture together with the dress and setting prevents it from becoming merely an isolated sign of grandeur.

Books, eagle furniture, drapery and landscape

The table offers a compact account of Washington’s public career. Under it, book titles refer to military orders, the American Revolution and the Constitution and laws of the United States. On top, the Federalist and Journal of Congress direct attention toward constitutional debate and legislative activity. Miles identifies these titles as part of the portrait’s thematic design. They are carefully chosen references within the image, rather than an incidental shelf of books that happened to stand in the room. ^[20]

The Federalist also connects the portrait with people in Stuart’s world. John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote the essays in 1787–88 in support of the Constitution. Their presence through a book title gives intellectual and political context to Washington’s standing figure. The image asks the viewer to understand presidential leadership in relation to written argument, law and the work of government, not solely through the sitter’s personal fame. ^[20]

Papers, a quill and an inkwell extend this emphasis on writing. The inkwell takes an elaborate form, with an ark supported by recumbent dogs, while the hat nearby belongs to Washington’s ceremonial presentation. The small objects vary the scale of attention within the picture: after the commanding body and large drapery, they draw the eye toward a surface on which decisions might be recorded. Their exact arrangement is part of the composition’s rhetoric. ^[20]

The table and chair add national emblems. Eagles and shield forms draw on the language of the Great Seal of the United States. Miles discusses the birds, arrows, stars and stripes as elements adapted into the furniture’s decoration. The furnishings need not have existed as physical objects in this arrangement. Their role is to give the setting a distinctly American meaning while retaining the richness expected of a grand state portrait. ^[20]

Not every accessory has an established political explanation. The black cockade on Washington’s hat, for example, should not automatically be assigned a documented partisan meaning. Miles explicitly distinguishes the possibility of political symbolism from evidence for this particular object. Resisting an explanation for every detail can make the stronger symbols clearer: the book titles and seal-derived decoration provide firmer grounds for interpretation. ^[20]

The columns and curtain place Washington within a setting derived from European portraits of public figures. The carpeted foreground is furnished like an interior, while openings behind the figure admit sky and weather. A rainbow appears beyond the architecture. Contemporary commentary on a related full-length version treated storms and their abatement as an allegory of the difficulties Washington had faced. These elements expand the picture beyond a domestic room into a larger account of public struggle and resolution. ^[14]

The drapery also has a visual task. Large folds and saturated red passages balance the dark suit, while the cloth on the table interrupts and reveals the furniture beneath it. The eye moves between concealed and exposed forms, from fabric to gilded decoration and back toward the figure. Stuart’s painting technique is integral to that effect: the portrait communicates through the handling and arrangement of colour as well as through identifiable symbols.

What is known about the sittings

Washington’s letter to Stuart gives the arrangements for a sitting a rare documentary immediacy. Written on the evening of 11 April 1796, it explains his promise to Mrs. Bingham to sit the following morning “at nine oclock.” He asks whether that would suit the artist and whether to come to Stuart’s house, noting that she had mentioned the State House. The note shows a president negotiating the practical details of an appointment, with Anne Bingham’s role clearly present. ^[17]

It does not tell us how many sittings occurred in total. Nor does the question about location settle the final venue by itself. Miles discusses the sitting in relation to a house belonging to William Moore Smith, while other portions of the portrait’s history involve Stuart’s later working arrangements in Germantown. Those separate circumstances should not be compressed into a single, fully documented studio scene. ^[21]

The president’s attendance would also have been only part of the painting’s production. The face, standing body, hands, costume and elaborate surroundings did not all have to be painted while Washington remained in position. Miles considers reports of stand-ins for the figure and the use of casts. Different later accounts name William Moore Smith, Michael Keppele and the vicomte de Noailles in connection with the body. Their competition is a reason to preserve uncertainty rather than confidently identify one substitute. ^[21]

Later comments by Washington’s grandson George Washington Parke Custis distinguished the successful likeness of the head from what he considered an inaccurate fullness in the body. Those comments belong to the painting’s reception as well as to its possible working methods. A viewer’s recognition of the sitter and a judgement about bodily proportion are separate responses. The picture could establish Washington’s identity powerfully while prompting disagreement over other parts of its representation. ^[21]

The surviving appointment letter acquired another layer in 1823, when Stuart annotated it in connection with the portrait then owned by Samuel Williams. His retrospective statement identifies the original he had retained and another first study he had erased. The letter consequently joins a contemporary arrangement for posing to a much later explanation of the Washington originals. The three-type comparison follows those distinctions more fully. ^[17]

Reading the paper beside the painting brings different times into view. There is the moment of arranging access, the extended labour of creating a full-length composition, the subsequent production of replicas and the painter’s later effort to explain which works had originated from life. A single dated note anchors part of that history without reducing the whole process to one morning.

Replicas, engravings and the spread of the image

The composition generated other full-length paintings with individual patrons and histories. William Bingham commissioned a version for himself, now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. William Kerin Constable, a New York merchant and landowner, acquired another, now at the Brooklyn Museum. Their relationship to the original is central, but their separate commissions and ownership matter just as much as their shared arrangement of figure and furniture. ^[4]

For Bingham’s painting, Miles considers an account of Robert Gilmor Jr.’s visit to Stuart in 1797 and entries in Bingham’s account book. Gilmor described the work in the studio as a copy intended for Bingham’s own use. That documentary evidence helps distinguish the Pennsylvania picture from the canvas sent to Lansdowne. The existence of a signature and date on a related painting cannot settle priority without the rest of its history. ^[22]

Constable’s version has a different documentary framework, including a receipt and a later family account of visits to the studio. Miles discusses its relation to the Bingham and Lansdowne paintings without claiming an entirely secure sequence between the replicas. The family’s recollection of watching the work progress adds information, but remains retrospective. Each canvas requires its own combination of documentary, stylistic and material evidence. ^[23]

An artist’s replica can preserve a composition while changing its execution. Differences in colour, furniture details, the drapery and the development of passages have shaped discussion of these full-length versions. They show why a thumbnail is insufficient for establishing originality. Shared design may be immediately recognizable, while the relationship between particular paintings requires much closer study. ^{[22] [23]}

James Heath’s engraving carried the Lansdowne image into another medium in 1800. The National Portrait Gallery’s impression, NPG.81.55, is an engraving on paper after Stuart, with its own image and sheet dimensions. Its printed title and publication margin form part of the object. Heath translates the composition’s colours and broad painted masses into patterned lines, making a different encounter with the standing president possible. ^[24]

The print also became a source of conflict. Stuart expected to profit from an engraving after his painting, but Heath’s project proceeded without his agreement. Miles follows the dispute through correspondence and later accounts, including the painter’s draft complaint to Lansdowne. The original gift, its owner’s willingness to permit reproduction and Stuart’s expectations for his own income did not align. The image’s growing reach could therefore be a professional disappointment to its maker as well as a sign of success. ^[25]

The date printed on the engraving should not silently replace the date of the oil painting. The NPG dates Heath’s print to 1800 and the original Lansdowne to 1796, even though the print’s inscription gives a different painting year. Likewise, the printmaker should remain visible in the credit. A reproduction after Stuart is an object made by another artist, not another Stuart oil canvas. ^{[24] [2]}

A separate painting in the White House

The full-length Washington acquired for the President’s House in 1800 belongs to the Lansdowne family but is a different painting. It was this version that was saved during the British attack on Washington in 1814. By then, the original gift canvas had long been in England. The rescue story cannot establish anything about physical damage, framing or removal of the portrait now numbered NPG.2001.13. ^[3]

Dolley Madison’s insistence on preserving the picture is part of the history, while its physical removal and transportation involved others. Paul Jennings’s recollections, published in 1865, reject the story that she personally cut out and carried away the canvas. He credits the doorkeeper he calls John Suse and the gardener Magraw with taking it down and sending it away. His account makes household labour visible within an event often reduced to one celebrated action. ^[26]

Jennings had been enslaved in the Madison household, and his recollections were recorded for publication by another writer. Their retrospective and mediated character should remain clear. The White House Historical Association additionally identifies Jacob Barker and Robert DePeyster in the transportation of the painting to safety. Decisions to save it, work to remove it and responsibility for carrying it away were related but distinct contributions. ^{[26] [27]}

The association’s account reports that a 1978 examination found no evidence that the canvas had been cut or removed from its stretcher and rolled. Taking a painting out of an outer frame differs from slicing through its painted support. That finding qualifies the familiar dramatic account of removal. It is a published report about the White House object, rather than evidence from the later NPG treatment of the original Lansdowne. ^[27]

The White House picture also has a complicated early history, including later disputes over authorship and transactions. Miles notes limits in the documentation rather than confirming every colourful story about Stuart and his copies. The most useful distinction here is firm: it has its own provenance and conservation history. The original’s transatlantic gift history and the White House version’s 1814 rescue belong beside one another, with neither substituted for the other. ^[3]

The original at the National Portrait Gallery

The original’s provenance continued through several owners after Lansdowne’s death. The NPG record traces its purchase in 1806 by Samuel Williams, its later passage through the Lewis family and its acquisition in 1889 by the fifth Earl of Rosebery. It subsequently descended within that family before the museum purchased it in 2001. The painting’s name consequently outlasted its first recipient, preserving the memory of the original gift through later changes of ownership. ^[2]

Its relationship with the Portrait Gallery began as a long-term loan in 1968. Acquisition in 2001, supported by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, changed that relationship to museum ownership. A later NPG announcement records those two stages distinctly. The work’s presence in the museum before purchase should not be read as evidence that it already belonged to the collection. ^[28]

The exact collection identifier is particularly useful for a painting with so many related images. NPG.2001.13 distinguishes this canvas from the Pennsylvania, Brooklyn and White House versions. It also separates the painting from photographs made at different times and from engravings translating its composition. A title can identify a subject or portrait family; an accession number reconnects the discussion to a particular physical object.

Museum ownership has given the original a different audience from the one imagined for Lansdowne House. The gift intended for a British statesman became an object through which later viewers encounter the visual history of the American presidency. Its particular beginning still matters within that setting. The Binghams’ interests, Anne’s role, the treaty context and the recipient’s identity keep the painting connected to an exchange between named people rather than an abstract national commission.

The official object record provides the route to the museum’s collection information. Current display arrangements should be checked independently when planning a visit. Historical accounts of a loan, a reinstallation or a temporary conservation closure explain the painting’s past; they do not guarantee where it can be seen on a future date.

What conservation reveals

Questions about originality have long included material evidence. Miles discusses the nineteenth-century comparison of the Lansdowne and Bingham versions, when George Scharf proposed looking for changes made during painting. A pentimento is a surviving trace of an earlier arrangement beneath a later one. Such revisions can help show a composition developing, although they need to be considered with the documentary history rather than treated as a universal test of authorship. ^[22]

The NPG’s 2016–17 conservation project combined imaging with treatment of a yellowed varnish . Infrared examination revealed changes in the columns and legs, and showed that part of the table leg had been painted before the covering cloth. No underdrawing was detected in this painting. X-radiography documented revisions around the extended hand and cuff and an additional quill no longer visible in the finished image. ^[29]

The treatment reduced or removed the discoloured coating and revealed cooler colour relationships. The report describes particular difficulties around the black coat and distinguishes analysis from the later work of cleaning, varnishing and compensating losses. These findings concern this canvas and this treatment campaign; the absence of detected underdrawing does not establish a rule for every Stuart painting. ^[29]

The technical evidence also changes how a composed image is understood. A stable public figure can result from repeated adjustment. Furniture, fabric and gesture may look inevitable in the finished picture even though their relationships were reconsidered during its making. The portrait’s authority is an effect Stuart constructed through painting, and the surviving changes give that construction a material history.

The whole composition remains the best starting point. Follow the face toward the extended hand, then down to the table and books; compare the dark suit with the moving red fabric and the opening toward the sky. The details add meaning through their place within that larger arrangement. Beside the Athenaeum pair and the earlier Vaughan type , Lansdowne shows how Stuart extended a convincing likeness into an ambitious image of public office.