Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 164

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(GEORGE WASHINGTON.) Valentine Green, engraver; after Trumbull. General Washington. Colored mezzotint, 20 1/4 x 16 3/4 inches; margins restored, professionally conserved in 2005. London: Colnaghi, Sala & Co., 1 October 1799
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The earliest representations of Washington in Europe were the fictional Shepard-Campbell portraits of 1775 and their many imitators. In July 1780, Washington's former aide-de-camp John Trumbull came to London, hoping to launch a career as an artist under the tutelage of Benjamin West. One of his first projects was a portrait of Washington done from memory, and influenced by a Peale portrait he had copied back in America. He was imprisoned in November 1780 in response to the hanging of British officer John André, where he remained through July 1781. During his time in prison, the prominent mezzotint engraver Valentine Green set the portrait to paper, possibly the first print of a Trumbull painting--and the first print of Washington in Europe with any claim to accuracy. In the waning years of the war, it soon became the definitive European depiction of the American commander.

This is a scarce later state of the mezzotint, with the original address at lower right changed to a 1799 Colnaghi, Sala & Co. imprint line. Hart found a single copy of this state which he recorded in his Addenda section, where he noted "The only impression of this state that I know is printed in colors." None are listed in OCLC. Anderson Galleries offered one in 1910 from the Searle collection, which they described as "a print of the greatest rarity: Neither Holden, Carson or Mitchell were able to obtain an impression of this plate printed in colors." The only other example we trace at auction was sold in 2021 by the Potomack Company. Their copy shows slightly different coloring patterns in the boots and horse's mane, suggesting that both were at least partly hand-colored. Cresswell 215 (first state); Hart addenda 84b, page 378; Wick, page 26 (first state).