Lot 1143: Valentine Green (1739-1813) after John Trumbull (1756-1843) Fine American and European Furniture, Silver, Folk and Decorative Arts and Clocks

General Washington, January 15, 1781 Mezzotint Engraving Published by Valentine Green, No. 29 Newman Street, Oxford Street, London 22 7/8 x 16in (58.1 x 40.6cm)

58.1 x 40.6cm

: Stony Brook, NY, the Museums at Stony Brook; Chadds Ford, PA, the Brandywine River Museum; and Lexington, MA, the Museum of Our National Heritage, February 1999 - February 2000, George Washington: American Symbol, cat. no. A9.

Trained as a lawyer in Britain, Green instead became an engraver, achieving the rank of associate-engraver of the Royal Academy in 1775. He is known to have produced some four hundred plates after works by British and European masters including Reynolds, Romney, Van Dyck as well as the American born Benjamin West and John Trumbull. This engraving, after a 1780 painting by Trumbull, depicts General George Washington just prior to his victory in the American Revolution. See Stan V. Henkels, The Hampton L. Carson Collection Catalogue of Engraved Portraits, (Philadelphia, 1804), no. 906; William S. Baker, The Engraved Portraits of Washington (Philadelphia, 1880), no. 147; Charles Henry Hart, Catalogue of the Engraved Portraits of Washington (New York, 1904), no. 84; Suzy Wetzel Grote, "Engravings of George Washington in the Stanley DeForest Scott Collection," The Magazine Antiques (July, 1977), p. 131, fig. 12; and Wendy Wick Reaves, George Washington, An American Icon: The Eighteenth Century Portraits., exhibition catalogue, The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Portrait Gallery, (Washington DC, 1982), p. 27, fig. 14.