George Washington,

ca. 1787

This replica of a 1787 painting by Peale held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was created to meet the immense demand for likenesses of George Washington throughout the United States during the late eighteenth century. Portraits of the first president were crucial to the project of nation-building and contributed to an emerging image bank of national identity. Princeton University played an early and ongoing role in the creation and circulation of these images, commissioning in 1783 Peale’s large-scale historical portrait George Washington at the Battle of Princeton, on view in the galleries of American art. The University continued to collect more than twenty-five additional representations of Washington in such diverse media as prints, medals, and ceramics. This painting descended through the family of its donor before it was given to the Princeton University Art Museum in the late twentieth century.