Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
The Painter's Chair (14 page)
Washington’s custom was to retire at nine o’clock, but it was much later that Sunday night when the barking of dogs and a
household commotion on the first floor woke him. “After we were in bed (about eleven o’clock in the evening),” Washington
noted in his diary, “Mr. Houdon . . . and three young men assistants, introduced by a Mr. Perin, a French gentleman of Alexandria,
arrived here by water from the latter place.”
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Houdon spoke little English, so Joseph Marie Perrin, a merchant and storekeeper who ran a store opposite the Alexandria courthouse,
was enlisted as translator. Soon Houdon and Perrin, along with the three
élèves
(Houdon’s student assistants, two young Frenchmen and an Italian lad named Micheli), were shown to their quarters. Then the
Washing-tons and their other visitors, who included a variety of family members, several friends, and two clergymen, settled
down once again for the night.
In the morning Houdon produced a letter of reference from the Marquis de Lafayette. A decade earlier, the nineteen-year-old
French aristocrat had outfitted a ship,
La Victoire
, at his own expense and sailed to America in support of the American cause. A captain in the French dragoons, the marquis
brought valuable military training, but the friendship that developed between him and Washington went well beyond their military
bond. Although a devoted stepfather, Washington had no children of his own. Lafayette had lost his father on the battlefield
before the boy turned two. A fond friendship developed, as Washington and Lafayette came to regard each other as father and
son.
The marquis had become well acquainted with Houdon a few months before when the sculptor had been commissioned to make a bust
of him, and the unfinished marble awaited the artist’s return to his Paris workshop. Lafayette wrote of Houdon, “Nothing but
the love of glory and his respect for you could induce him to cross the seas.” Yet Washington’s feelings about the artist’s
presence in his house remained mixed. In truth, his attitude toward each of the string of artists who came to him ranged from
philosophical acceptance to irritation and impatience. The imposing Virginian had long ago grown accustomed to public attention—whenever
he walked into a room, raised his sword in battle, or simply stepped from a carriage, all eyes seemed drawn to him. He felt
obliged to accede to artists’ requests for sittings, but he retained a strong dislike for having his picture taken.
For three days after Houdon’s arrival at Mount Vernon, mild autumn temperatures and the faultless Virginia skies enabled the
self-effacing artist to follow in his subject’s wake, while the older man (Washington was a hearty fifty-three) went about
the business of managing his plantation. Aside from the temporary presence of the unfamiliar French artist with whom he could
communicate only with difficulty, Washington’s circumstances at Mount Vernon brought him genuine joy. He had come home after
eight-and-a-half-years of war, during which he had spent less than two weeks on the land he loved. When at last he was able
to return to civilian life, after the English evacuation of New York, the General had resigned his commission as commander
in chief in Annapolis, climbed onto his horse, and galloped home.
He reached Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve 1783, firm in his resolve to stay there. “At length my Dear Marquis I am become a
private citizen,” he had written to Lafayette, “under the shadow of my own Vine and my own Figtree free from the bustle of
a camp & the busy scenes of public life . . . I shall be able to view the solitary walks, & tread the paths of private life
with heartfelt satisfaction . . . until I sleep with my Fathers.”
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A demanding taskmaster, the squire of Mount Vernon monitored work on his estate. The day before Houdon’s arrival a crew of
carpenters had raised scaffolding over the front door of the Mansion House, preparing to reshingle a portion of the roof and
install copper guttering. A landscaping project was under way, with slaves working to smooth the earth in front of the house
into a lawn that Washington called a “Bolling Green.”
In these unfamiliar environs, Houdon watched and waited.
THE OPPORTUNITY HOUDON wished for arrived with Thursday’s dank, gray skies. The weather was “dripping of rain, more or less
all day,” and the stocky Frenchman persuaded Washington to settle into the sitter’s chair. On that day and the next, a resigned
Washington posed “for Mr. Houdon to form my Bust.”
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The artist and his subject were left without a translator, Perrin having returned to Alexandria, but Houdon could at last
get to work on the task for which he had crossed an ocean.
The days Houdon spent waiting had not been entirely wasted. He grew familiar with the General’s long-legged gait, studied
his enormous hands, his broad face, and his courtly but quiet manner. He watched Washington with his family and friends, and
one morning observed a revealing exchange with a man little known to the General. A messenger had arrived at the breakfast
table that day, bringing word that a farmer waited on Washington at Mount Vernon’s western gate. The message was that he had
brought two horses Washington wished to buy.
When Washington rose from the table, so did Houdon; he remained within earshot of Washington’s conversation, too. The visitor
quite evidently hoped to consummate a deal for the horses and, after a time, the General asked the man to name his price.
When he did, Washington reacted by throwing his head back and uttering a strong but indecipherable sound of outrage. At that
moment, the artist saw the pose he wished to record. He would portray Washington with his chin raised, head tilted slightly,
with a certain firmness to the jaw. Houdon had watched Washington go about his daily life, his features unreadable—but in
a conversational moment the mask had cracked, and Houdon glimpsed the expression he would use to give his
Washington
a tension, a mobility, even a vitality.
In his makeshift studio Houdon’s medium was clay. The Frenchman gradually built up the soft and pliable material, starting
with large chunks. As a vaguely ovoid form began to resemble a human head, he added thinner layers. The moist clay had a soft,
plastic quality that lent itself to modeling, and Houdon manipulated the material with his hands and with tools that seemed
like extensions of his fingers. As he worked the surface, he added more clay. In areas where he had too much, he trimmed and
sliced.
Washington’s hair was pulled back and tied in a braid at the nape of his neck, revealing a lengthening forehead. Houdon took
regular measurements from his sitter, using calipers, a measuring device consisting of a pair of legs fastened at a hinged
joint. The Washington bust was to be life-size, so Houdon could measure the breadth of Washington’s brow, the length of his
jaw, the distance from nose to cheekbone. Calipers of differing sizes allowed for determining larger or smaller distances
as Houdon moved from the man to the soft clay mass, transferring his measurements.
For two days, Houdon worked to capture not only the structure of Washington’s head, neck, and chest but also his facial features,
blending actual appearance with his own sense of the man’s character. The hair he left unfinished, shaping it roughly with
his tools and fingers, but he worked the face and neck to a smooth texture. The eyes he shaped had holes for the pupils, drilled
deeply into recesses suggesting irises. The likeness was there—the strong jaw, the lined forehead, the large nose—when, on
Saturday, the sun reemerged and Houdon lost his model. Washington happily resumed his normal routine and that mild fall day
saw to the sowing of grass seed imported from England in the ornamental front lawn. On Sunday, Washington, Houdon, and several
men in his household rode to a nearby plantation to attend a funeral. Meanwhile, back at Mount Vernon, the clay head remained
atop bare shoulders.
The sculpture was not a highly polished effort—Houdon planned to fulfill the Virginia commission working in marble upon his
return to Paris—but in this first bust, the connection between artist and subject could hardly have been more immediate. Houdon
captured in clay his fleeting impression of the great man.
GEORGE WASHINGTON LEARNED from life. While fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson had collected and read thousands of books, Washington’s
literary exposure was more limited. Lacking a college education, he remained self-conscious about his lack of formal education,
but he possessed keen powers of observation and regularly recorded what he saw and thought in detail in his letters and diaries.
Typically, on Monday, October 10, Washington found himself fascinated by the process of preparing “Plaister of Paris.”
To begin, Washington noted, Houdon’s assistants broke chunks of gypsum into lumps that were no larger than “the size of a
pullets egg.” In the absence of a kiln, the visiting artist adapted a kitchen bake oven to dehydrate the plaster. A wood fire
was built in the oven to preheat the dome-shaped masonry mass; after the fuel burned down, the coals and ash were raked out.
Having built a larger fire than was usual (the plaster needed to reach higher temperatures than did house hold baked goods),
Houdon’s assistants put the plaster into the oven, closed the door, and left it overnight. “[S]ufficiently calcined by this
operation,” Washington noted in his detailed diary entry, “[the Plaister] was pulverized (in an Iron Mortar) & sifted for
use through a fine lawn sieve, & kept from wet.”
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Houdon’s artistry with clay had produced a bust, but he was acutely aware that upon his return to Paris, he would have to
complete his commission of the standing sculpture of General Washington—
and
he would have to do so without the man himself to refer to. The bust would be invaluable, but he also wanted a life mask to
measure and study.
The plaster was ready for use by Thursday. Mount Vernon’s servants’ hall had become Houdon’s workroom and, when Washington
came to him, the General’s hair was once again pulled back, and this time covered with a towel. Washington reclined on a large
table and a sheet was spread over him to protect his clothing from dollops of plaster. To ease the removal of the plaster
mask, his face was lubricated with oil, a thorough dose of which was applied to his eyebrows and lashes.
The fine powdered plaster was swiftly sifted into a basin containing water and mixed with a flat iron spoon. The plaster was
ready, as Washington observed, when “the water is made as thick as Loblolly or very thick cream.” Before the application of
the plaster, two quills were inserted, one into each of Washington’s nostrils, so he could breathe. Instructed to remain motionless,
Washington lay quietly with his lips pursed and eyes closed.
The plaster was daubed on by hand and smoothed with a common Philadelphia painter’s brush. No time could be wasted: The creamy
plaster soon began to stiffen; with the passage of five or six minutes, it would become difficult to work with. The setting
plaster generated heat, and the sculptor and his subject alike could feel the warmth of the crystallization process on their
skins.
While the process was proceeding, six-year-old Eleanor Custis (Nelly) happened past the doorway to the servants’ hall. A daughter
of Martha Washington’s son Jacky, Nelly and her younger brother Washy (George Washington Parke Custis) had become wards of
the Washingtons. In the four years since her father’s death she had come to regard the General as her father, so Nelly was
alarmed at the sight of him laid out on the table, covered with a sheet as if dead. She was soon offered reassurances that
all was not as it seemed, and, to her relief, the General shortly reemerged from behind the hardened plaster mask, which was
gently removed from his face, lifted from the forehead, then off the chin. When he rose from the table, he was very much alive
and well.
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