The Washington Family

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Status

Not on view

DateMarch 10 1798

After Edward Savage (American, 1761 - 1817)

Engraver Edward Savage (American, 1761 - 1817)

Engraver David Edwin (American, 1776 - 1832)

Publisher Edward Savage (American, 1761 - 1817)

Publisher Robert Wilkinson (English, active c.1760 - 1825)

Subject George Washington (American, 1732 - 1799)

Subject Martha Washington (American, 1731 - 1802)

Subject George Washington Parke Custis (American, 1781 - 1857)

Subject Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (American, 1779 - 1852)

Subject William Lee (American, 1772 - 1840)

Geography Made - United States

Medium/TechniqueInk on paper; stipple and line engraving on copper

DimensionsOverall: (H x W) 27 in. × 31 1/2 in. (68.58 cm × 80.01 cm) Plate: (H x W): 20 1/2 in. × 25 1/4 in. (52.07 cm × 64.14 cm) Image (H x W): 18 1/2 in. × 24 1/2 in. (46.99 cm × 62.23 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, 1960

Object numberW-2363

DescriptionA landscape format portrait of the Washington family in an interior with an enslaved manservant in livery, most likely William Lee, standing to the far right. In the background is a distant view of the Potomac River with several boats. The title printed in English (at left) and French (at right) in bottom margin.

Published ReferencesDeborah Jean Warner, Portrait Prints of Men of Science in Eighteenth-Century America, Imprint 25, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 26–33.

Scott E. Caspar, First First Family: Seventy Years with Edward Savage's The Washington Family, 24, no. 2 (Autumn 1999), 2-15.

David McNeeley Stauffer, Mantle Fielding, and Thomas Hovey Gage, American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, (New York: The Grolier Club of New York, 1994).

E. McSherry Fowble, To Please Every Taste: Eighteenth-Century Prints from the Winterthur Museum, (Art Services International, 1991), 112-3.

E. McSherry Fowble, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate: Two Centuries of Prints in America, 1680-1880: A selective catalogue of the Winterthur Museum Collection, (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1987).

Wendy C. Wick, George Washington: An American Icon (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution and National Portrait Gallery, 1982), 122-4.

Wendy J. Shadwell, American Printmaking: The First 150 Years, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969).

Robert L. Harley, George Washington Lived Here: Some Early Prints of Mount Vernon Part I, Antiques 47, no. 2 (February 1945), 103-5.

John Hill Morgan and Mantle Fielding, The Life Portraits of Washington and their Replicas, (Philadelphia: Lancaster Press, 1931), 183-6.

Charles Henry Hart, Catalogue of the Engraved Portraits of Washington, (New York: The Grolier Club, 1904).

Charles Henry Hart, Edward Savage, Painter and Engraver, and His Unfinished Copper Plate of Congress Voting Independence, (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1905), 11, 350.

William Spohn Baker, The Engraved Portraits of Washington, (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Baker, 1880).

MarkingsPrinted in ink below image, centered: "Painted & Engraved by E. Savage". Printed in ink on the bottom-left side of the sheet: "The Washington Family. / George Washington his Lady and her two Grandchildren by the name of Custis.". Printed in ink on the bottom-right side of the sheet: "La Famille de Washington / George Washington Son Epouse et Ses deux petits Enfants du Nom du Custis". Printed in ink at the bottom of the sheet, centered: "Philadelphia. Publish'd March 10th(?)1798 by E. Savage & Robt. Wilkinson No. 58 Cornhill London".

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