To mark the anniversary of the birth of George Washington, this week’s picture is Washington and his Generals at Yorktown. The work shows the man destined to become America’s first president, together with some of his French allies, stolidly rejoicing in their victory in the decisive battle of the American Revolution. Painted in about 1784, three years after the Battle of Yorktown, it has traditionally been attributed to Charles Willson Peale, one of the most influential American artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But some scholars now believe it was painted by his younger brother and studio assistant, James Peale, on the basis of its rather charming naivete and less than convincing perspective. In all probability the pair collaborated in its creation, with James painting the landscape and Charles the figures.
Both brothers were committed Republicans who had seen active military service during the American War of Independence, and who knew Washington personally. Neither was present at the battle of Yorktown but their picture has the quality of a piece of eyewitness reportage. Certain details are so unusual and strange (and so untraditional in battle painting) that it seems likely that they are records of things seen at first hand in actual warfare, rather than invented. On the shoreline lie the abandoned decaying carcases of several cavalry horses. Nearby the masts of several half-sunken ships jut from the sea, a confusion of dark timbers.
The Peale brothers were the sons of a character straight out of Hogarth or Dickens. Their father was a London conman called Charles Peale the elder, who had been convicted for large-scale embezzlement, sentenced to death, granted a last-minute reprieve and transported to America on a convict ship. He died when his children were still young, leaving them with only their...
