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A three-storied, white manor house with a rust-red roof and wings extending off both sides sits across an emerald-green lawn lined with tall, sage and dark green trees in this horizontal painting. Straw-brown paths lead to the house from either side of the lawn, where they meet an oval-shaped path directly in front of the house. The grassy area inside the oval is cordoned off with posts and weighted chains. Closer to us, three men, two women, and a gray dog stand on the lawn. Two of the men wear uniforms with navy-blue, button-lined jackets with golden yellow epaulets and collars, dark, tricorn hats, and butter-yellow britches over black, knee-high boots. The third man wears a brown suit with a white collar. Both the women wear white dresses. One has a sky-blue sash around her waist and the other has a black shawl wrapped across her torso, and wears a white bonnet. Two light-skinned people, perhaps a man and a child, walk along the path to our left, wearing gray suits. Four people closer to the house have brown skin. One of them, a woman, stands at the front center of the oval path and other three men approach a door in the wing to our left. One of that trio carries a shovel over his shoulder, one a rake, and the other a staff. A carriage guided by a seated horseman and pulled by four horses enters the scene from our right. To our left and right, covered walkways connect the main house to the side wings. The wing to our right is mostly hidden by trees and cut off by the right edge of the painting. The wing to our left has a teal-blue roof, red brick chimneys, and the same white walls as the manor. The main house has a triangular pediment over the front door and chimneys to each side of the red roof. A spire-like lantern is at the center of the roofline, over the pediment. Faint, wispy white clouds billow against the azure-blue sky above. Centered at the bottom of the scene across a white margin are the words, “A VIEW OF MOUNT.VERNON THE SEAT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.”

American 18th Century

A View of Mount Vernon, 1792 or after

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

image: 58.4 x 89.2 cm (23 x 35 1/8 in.)
un

framed (entire fireboard): 95.3 x 109.5 cm (37 1/2 x 43 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Accession Number

1953.5.89

Artists / Makers

American 18th Century (artist)

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

across bottom: A VIEW OF MOUNT.VERNON THE SEAT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.

Provenance

Recorded as from a home in Baltimore, Maryland. (H. Milton Feldman, city unknown), by whom sold in 1949 to Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch; gift to NGA, 1953.

Associated Names

Feldman, H. Milton
Garbisch, Edgar William, Mr. and Mrs.
Private Collection (NGA Former Owner)

Exhibition History

1962: Exhibition of Early American Art, Academy of the Arts, Talbot County Historical Society, Easton, Maryland, 1962, no. 31.

1974: The Flowering of American Folk Art 1776-1876, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1974, no. 265, repro. (cat. by Lipman and Winchester).

1975: Extended loan for use by The Octagon House, Washington, D.C., 1975.

1976: Extended loan for use by the Ambassador, U.S. Embassy residence, Tokyo, Japan, 1976-1980.

1982: George Washington: A Figure Upon the Stage, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian, Washington, 1982-1983, no. 145, color repro. (cat. by M. Brown Klapthor and H. Alexander Morrison).

Bibliography

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 154, repro.

1975: Little, Nina Fletcher. Country Arts in Early American Homes. New York, 1975: 103, 105, 185.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 301, repro.

1986: Lipman, Jean, et al. Young America. New York, 1986: color repro., 17.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 431, repro.

1992: Chotner, Deborah, with contributions by Julie Aronson, Sarah D. Cash, and Laurie Weitzenkorn. American Naive Paintings. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 624-626, color repro. 625.