- Pater Patriae
Sheet (irregular): 13 15/16 × 9 3/4 in. (35.4 × 24.8 cm)
Explore Further
Americans marked the death of George Washington with a variety of mourning imagery, including prints and schoolgirl embroideries based on print prototypes (B.86.13). This rare engraving, based on a lost painting by John Coles, Jr., incorporates iconography appropriate to the new nation: a liberty cap, a mourning Columbia, and a banner citing Washington’s military victories. The oval image of Washington is based on Edward Savage’s life portrait of 1792.
Related examples: Brown University, Providence; Historic Deerfield; MFA, Boston; MMA; Winterthur (Fowble 1987, p. 461, no. 325). Another is illustrated in Deutsch 1977, p. 325.
Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.
Provenance[The Old Print Gallery, Washington, D.C.]; purchased by MFAH, 1996.
Exhibition History"Radicals and Revolutionaries: America's Founding Fathers," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 10–May 28, 2018.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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