George Washington

Rembrandt Peale

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

When he was eighteen, Rembrandt Peale painted a portrait of Washington from life in the presence of his father, Charles Willson Peale. During the remainder of his career, Rembrandt demonstrated a near obsession with Washington and replicated this famous portrait seventy-nine times. The stone oval derives from the seventeenth-century European fashion for tromp l'oeil stone casements, a format Peale may have observed during periods of study in Europe.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art