The One and the Many: Authenticity and Multiplicity in the Posthumous Lives of George Washington's Portraits

George Washington’s singular national prominence in American patriotic memory has placed his portraits in a state of continual reassessment and has made them a well-documented target of historical, political, and popular scrutiny. After his death in 1799, these portraits became a visual embodiment of his absent presence and played a key role in defining an American national portrait tradition. His portraits became potent objects through which the American public could actualize their desires to preserve, multiply, and sacralize Washington’s memory. However, in order to allow them to function in this way, the public increasingly demanded assurances that their portraits were authentic representations of Washington’s person. In this dissertation I examine the reception history of these portraits from Washington’s death to the end of the nineteenth century. I argue that the level of sustained interest granted to these portraits over this period make them an ideal case for investigating changing notions of authenticity in portraiture. As an impressive range of artist, collectors, printsellers, publishers, historians, and politicians grappled with the demand for authentic records of Washington’s appearance, they interrogated an assortment of cultural considerations regarding which types of evidence granted authority to a portrait, and which did not. Spanning a key historical moment that begins with portraiture, biography, and nationalism expanding to permeate all layers of American society and continuing through to the development and rapid spread of photography, the representational paradigms of portraiture during this period were in a state of profound flux. As various portraits of Washington were interpreted, and reinterpreted, by those hoping to garner public confidence in one representation or another, the often abstract ideas that stabilize links between signifier and signified were put to practical use. This dissertation examines three case studies that provide insight into the changing notion of authenticity in early American national portraiture through the posthumous lives of Washington’s portraits