PAINTERS CHAIR
THE PAINTER’S CHAIR, by Hugh Howard, is an interesting history of the founding of an American school of art based on the iconography surrounding our first President, George Washington. As a founding figure of the nation’s history, he would be important in his own right, but his perceived rectitude in handing over power after the Revolutionary War and returning to Mount Vernon led him to be compared to the Roman hero Cincinnatus. Painters such as Charles Wilson Peale, John Trumbull and Gilbert Stuart made their reputations as portraitists limning his likeness on canvas. The book also touches on Washington’s views on the arts, and his adopted children’s role in the perpetuation of his memory. This slim volume helps to give another side of the Father of our Country.