![]() The origin story of the painting, some of which was known but had large gaps, also came together through their research, the experts said. The forensic analysis of the painting finally took Soltis and MacDonald-Korth to Paris, where with help from specialists at the Louvre, they determined that, aside from the overpainting, the brushstrokes and the character of the paint used were in line with works already embraced as by Peale. For example, she said, little is known about the identity of the mob that tore down King George III’s statue on Bowling Green in 1776, an act that Washington distanced himself from.Īctually after the war, Bellion said, Washington became quite popular in England - “a rock star,” she said, among his former wartime adversaries, including King George. Wendy Bellion, a professor of American art history at the University of Delaware and author of “Iconoclasm in New York,” about attacks on British monuments during the American Revolution, said it is often difficult to say who vandalized artworks. “This horrible mask-like face.” Peale’s faces, she said, were usually delicate and linear. “What am I looking at?” she remembered thinking. Soltis, who had reviewed many a Peale painting, was shocked. Hall, meanwhile, whose work involves visiting embassies abroad, took photos of the Paris painting for the experts she had hired. The experts also analyzed similar Peale portraits of Washington that hang at Mount Vernon and in the Senate. ![]() Their research was initially hobbled by the pandemic, and other factors, but last spring MacDonald-Korth used high-tech equipment to study the underpainting and trace the elements of the paints used in the original in Philadelphia. The other was Emily MacDonald-Korth, an art conservator and forensic specialist with her own laboratory, Longevity Art Preservation in Miami. One was Carol Eaton Soltis, a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and author of “The Art of the Peales” (Yale University Press, 2017). Hall, initially puzzled by the work’s scant documentation, called in two experts. ![]() embassy in Paris, thinking the portrait was in need of conservation, ended up enlisting Hall, at what was then the State Department’s newly created cultural heritage office. She had bought it in the late 1950s or early ’60s from a New York gallery. ![]() She was the granddaughter of Thomas Fortune Ryan, the tobacco magnate and financier who became one of the world’s richest men in part by consolidating the New York trolley-car system. The expert findings, which were announced in time for Presidents’ Day and are detailed in a video, are the product of an inquiry that began in 2016, decades after the painting had been given to the U.S. He would do so again in 1783, 1787 and, finally, in 1795, when Washington was president, for a record seven original portraits from life. By this time, Peale, who served in combat with the Pennsylvania militia, had already painted Washington from life in 1772, 17. This portrait had been en route to the Netherlands in 1780, an intended diplomatic gift for its leadership, when the ship carrying it was captured by the British Navy. “It didn’t look like any other portraits in the series,” said Lauren Hall, a conservator with the agency’s Office of Cultural Heritage who was put in charge of authenticating it.īut now after rigorous analysis including lengthy scientific study of the paint materials and historical documents, experts are confident they can declare the portrait a true Peale, one of many versions of his 1779 original, which the artist painted over and over in an era when copiers did not exist and an image of Washington was thought essential to the new nation’s glorification of its sovereignty. Sotheby’s had evaluated the painting for the State Department in 2000 and would refer to it only as “attributed” to Peale. ![]()
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