Mount Vernon and its associations, historical, biographical and pictorial . ives; thatof Lawrence Washington alone remains. Only one more object of interest at Mount Vernon remainsto be noticed. It is a portrait of Washington taken from acommon English earthenware pitcher, and is known as ThePitcher Portrait. It is in a deep gilt frame, and upon theback is an admirable eulogy of the great Patriot, in monumen-tal form. The history of this portrait and the eulogy was com-municated to me recently by the venerable artist, RembrandtPeale, of Philadelphia, and is both curious and interesting. About
Mount Vernon and its associations, historical, biographical and pictorial . ives; thatof Lawrence Washington alone remains. Only one more object of interest at Mount Vernon remainsto be noticed. It is a portrait of Washington taken from acommon English earthenware pitcher, and is known as ThePitcher Portrait. It is in a deep gilt frame, and upon theback is an admirable eulogy of the great Patriot, in monumen-tal form. The history of this portrait and the eulogy was com-municated to me recently by the venerable artist, RembrandtPeale, of Philadelphia, and is both curious and interesting. About the year 1804, the late John R. Smith, of Phila-delphia, son of the eminent Jonathan P>ayard Smith, showed 350 MOUNT V E R X O N Mr. Peale a copy by Sharpless himself, of that artists crayonprofile of Washington, made in 1790. On the back of it was aeulogy of Washington, written in monumental form in twocolumns, by an English gentleman, Mr. Smith said, whosename he had forgotten, or never knew. He told Mr. Pealethat the gentleman pasted it on the back of the PITCHER POHTKAIT. It was at about that time that a crockery dealer in Phila-delphia imported a number of earthenware pitchers fromLiverpool, each bearing a portrait of Wasliington from anengraving of Stuarts picture painted for the Manpiis of Lans-downe, which Heath had badly eni;raved, and Xutter hadbetter executed for Hunters quarto edition of Lavater. Nut-ters engraving was coarsely imitated in the one upon thepitcher. The i)itchers attracted the attention of Mr. Dorsey, a sugai- AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. 351 refiner of riiiladeli)liia, m-Iiu had a taste for art, and he pur-chased several of tlieni, as he considered tlie likeness ofWashington a good one. Mr. Dorsey, after several unsuc-cessful attempts to separate the part hearing the portrait, fromthe rest of the pitcher, succeeded, hj using the broad-facedhammer of a shoemaker, in breaking them cleanly out by asingle blow, given directly upon the picture. One
Size: 1284px × 1947px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorlossingb, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookyear1859
