Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-04-02
PORTRAITS OF WASHINGTON.

Rembrandt Peale's Account of How the
 First President Sat for His Father. Rembrandt Peale, the artist who painted the famous, but horrible in it's subject and suggestiveness, picture, "The Court of Death" was a son of the also famous Charles Wilson Peale, who painted from personal sittingsseveral portraits of Washington. In recent interview he said: ''Washington gave sittings to Stuart and my father at the same time, and was often with him. This was when he was president 1794. He sat for my father in the quiet early morning, before his state toilet had been made, and when he appeared to the eyes of the charmed observer simply as George Washington, the man and citizen. He was then about 62 years old, and the tolls and trials which he had passed through as the commander of the army, and the quite as great cares of six years of the presidency, added to the weight of increasing years, had told with no little severity upon his tall, stately and still impos- ing frame and features His somewhat thin hair was gray; years and fears and cares had all left traces on his face, and his teeth being gone, the lips and cheeks and lines about the mouth were somewhat depressed and contracted. My fathers portrait of him." repeated MT. Peale, twas exactly of Washington as he really was while he was the man only, and before he had prepared himself, as president, to enter upon his, more especially then than now, arduous duties as chief executive of the great but very yourg republic"
 "But why," it was asked, "the two DOT traits being painted at the same time, should Stuart's be so very unlike your fathers?" Simply because" continued Peale, s'as I have already stated, Washington gave his sittings to Stuart on the same day, but after careful preparation of his state toilet; and he was exceedingly, almost austerely nice in all matters of conventional dress and deport- ment Indeed, the remove from the manners and customs of England's monarchy was so recent and SO slight that the social atmos- phere of the White House partook largely of the etiquette of the court, and the expected and practiced department of the executive chamber was as formal in degree as that which had been necessary in order to have audience with the king.
 ''This state toilet, among other things, in- cluded the careful combing and powdering of the hair and the tying of it in cue; also a discreet "make up" of the face, and, most noticeable of all, the fitting into the mouth of a full set of false teeth. Now, the art and skill of the dentist ill those days had not att tained to very perfect imitation of nature, and the plates being large and clumsy, gave to the mouth and whole lower portion of the face that flat, full, square and unnatural ap- pearance which all careful observers of Stuart's great portrait cannot fail to observe, and which is very often questioningly re- marked upon. This portrait was adopted as harmonizing more fully with the courtly conception of what the personal appearance and habliments of one in so great authority should be, but as a portrait, it is of the president rather than of the man, and is to be regarded as the ideal, rather than as the real Washington."-A s. Pease in The Sara togian.