Lot 1146: Noel Le Mire (1724-1801), after Jean Baptiste Le Paon (1738-1785), after Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) Fine American and European Furniture, Silver, Folk and Decorative Arts and Clocks

Le General Washington, 1782 Engraving Published by Le Mire, Paris 16 5/8 x 12 3/4in (42.2 x 32.4cm)

42.2 x 32.4cm

: Stony Brook, NY, the Museums at Stony Brook; Chadds Ford, PA, the Brandywine River Museum; and Lexington, MA, the Museum of Our National Heritage, February 1999 - February 2000, George Washington: American Symbol, cat. no. A10.

: The Old Print Shop, Philadelphia Sotheby's New York, sale 6956, 16 January 1997, lot 155.

By 1782, when this engraving was published, the American artist Charles Willson Peale had completed four life portraits of Washington. For the painting that became the source for this engraving, the French artist Jean Baptiste Le Paon adopted Peale's 1776 portrait of George Washington (currently at the Brooklyn Museum of Art) and then embellished his version with an attendant, horse, tent, distant encampment as well as numerous torn, rejected and discarded documents. In his right hand, Washington displays the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Alliance with France, included by the French artist in acknowledgment of the French assistance in the American Revolution that was so vital for its success. See William S. Baker, The Engraved Portraits of Washington (Philadelphia, 1880), no. 21; Charles Henry Hart, Catalogue of the Engraved Portraits of Washington (New York, 1904), no. 31; Suzy Wetzel Grote, "Engravings of George Washington in the Stanley DeForest Scott Collection," The Magazine Antiques (July, 1977), p. 128, fig. 1; and Wendy Wick Reaves, George Washington, An American Icon: The Eighteenth Century Portraits., exhibition catalogue, The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Portrait Gallery, (Washington DC, 1982), p. 30, fig. 17.