Cleveland Museum of Art

George Washington at Princeton

Charles Willson Peale

Date

c. 1779

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

America

Department

American Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Because Peale served under General Washington and befriended him during the Revolutionary War, he was an ideal candidate to commemorate Washington's important early victory at Princeton, NJ. Here, in the quiet aftermath of battle, the general is accompanied by his horse and a groomsman, identified by some scholars as William Lee, a mixed-race enslaved man Washington forced to work as his personal assistant. Also present is a line of captured British redcoat soldiers that animates the background at left. Peale produced several versions of this composition amid a rally of enthusiasm for the American cause. Whereas some were commissioned by American colonists—as in the case here—others were ordered by Washington's admirers in France, Spain, Holland, Cuba, and even England. Artist and scientist Peale directed the first dig of a mastodon skeleton in the US.

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