White House Objects

As British troops reached Washington on August 24, 1814, Dolley Madison was emptying the President’s House. As she packed up the silver and drapery, the object she most wanted to rescue was causing trouble: Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of George Washington. So firmly was this fastened to the wall that the White House doorkeeper and gardener had to chop its frame to pieces before it could be ingloriously carted away to safety.

Jackie Kennedy, Charles Collingwood beneath Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington (1962)

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Not long afterward, the British arrived. They found the house deserted but the table still set for President Madison’s meal. This they ate before pilfering some small objects—including a sword, a shirt, and a chair cushion which (as a British admiral later wrote) would remind him of Mrs. Madison’s seat. The dinner over, they burned the house and all its important furnishings, but its prize possession, the iconic portrait of Washington, had escaped their clutches.

Mrs. Madison insisted on saving the portrait above other objects in the residence because it was something entirely new in the world, something essential for the fledgling nation’s success: a striking image that not only depicted the first president but, more important, the presidency itself. This was not an easy task for Gilbert Stuart. There were many archetypes of rulers—of kings and emperors and princes—but none of these would do. What was needed was the image of a citizen elected by his equals, not the trappings of inherited aristocracy. To create this from scratch was a daunting challenge. And Stuart’s solution was brilliant: He depicts Washington as an aged, unidealized civilian wearing a plain suit bereft of rank or insignia. Set amidst classical columns with the founding documents of the new United States before him, and a rainbow behind, he is not a king or prince but the First Citizen, an American primus inter pares.