The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art
Hugh Howard, . . Bloomsbury Press, $26.95 (297pp) ISBN 978-1-59691-244-1
Patron of the arts is not the first association one makes with George Washington, but Howard elegantly makes the case that the founder of the nation also helped establish America’s art. Though architecture, not painting, was Washington’s preferred art, America’s first prominent artists painted him: Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, Benjamin West and Gilbert Stuart, the most distinguished American painter of the period. Washington, who Howard argues was “easier to see and admire than to understand,” is subtly revealed in a narrative that is precisely paced and elegantly composed. Howard (
Reviewed on: 11/17/2008
Genre: Nonfiction