Lot 1804: WILLIAM JOSEPH WILLIAMS (American, (1759 - 1823). Portrait of George Washington, oil on canvas.

Name: WILLIAM JOSEPH WILLIAMS (American, (1759 - 1823). Portrait of George Washington, oil on canvas.
Brand: Sloans & Kenyon
SKU: gxz786t6jw

Est: $250,000 USD - $350,000 USDSold:

Sloans & KenyonChevy Chase, MD, USNovember 11, 2007

Item Overview

Description

WILLIAM JOSEPH WILLIAMS (American, (1759 - 1823). Portrait of George Washington, oil on canvas - 29 1/4 in. x 24 3/8 in.

Artist or Maker

William Joseph Williams

Condition Report

Please refer to department: 2004 conservator''s report available

Notes

William Joseph Williams was born in New York in 1759, and began a career as a portrait and miniature painter. In 1797 city directories list him as a limner in Philadelphia. He later moved to Charleston, South Carolina and New Bern, North Carolina, where he died in 1823.
In June of 1792 he traveled to Richmond, Virginia and there requested a letter of introduction to President Washington from Governor Henry Lee, who wrote "[Williams] is considered as possessing great natural talent in his line...He has a singular solicitude to be permitted to take your portrait and therefore has asked for a letter of introduction". Washington refused to be painted, replying that he was "heartily tired" of sitting for portraits, and that he had "resolved to sit no more for any of them."
Williams tried again a year later, asking the Alexandria Washington Masonic Lodge to solicit the President, offering in return to "compliment them with the portrait." This time Washington agreed, and between the fall of 1793 and the fall of 1794 sat for Williams in Philadelphia thirteen times over a period of eleven months, according to family tradition. Williams depicted him wearing Masonic regalia, including medal, sash and apron, with sun rays peaking through the sky above him.
The Lodge paid Williams $50 in October 1794 for a pastel drawing on paper, now at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Alexandria, VA. In 1882 this pastel portrait was reported as bearing, on the reverse, the inscription: "His Excellency, George Washington, Esq., President of the United Stated, aged 64, William Pinxit, ad virium in Philadelphia, Sept. 18th, 1794." By 1932 that inscription no longer existed.
Williams painted likenesses of the second two presidents: two oil portraits of John Adams, one now at the Adams National Historic Site, Quincy, MA, and one at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. A pastel portrait of Thomas Jefferson in referenced in Jefferson''s Memorandum Books and his inventory, but its whereabouts are unknown.
The Washington pastel was believed to be the only likeness of Washington that Williams completed until the discovery of the present lot, published in the Evening Star, February 23,1940.
Purchased as an old picture in a gold leaf frame twenty years earlier in a Philadelphia "junk shop" by Washington artist Helen L. Clark, who first made use of the frame, and then, needing a stretcher, stripped off the canvas, and discovered a portrait between two other canvases. Inscriptions, one on the reverse of the canvas, reading "A Portrait of George Washington, July,/1...4" and two on the stretcher, "w w pinxit" and "ww of 2 1794", led her, and its subsequent owner, Helena Pinckney, through further research to arrive at the conclusion that Williams had completed two portraits of Washington between the time the Lodge first solicited the President, in August 1793, and their receipt of the pastel, in October of 1794. The inscriptions, though none are extant, put the completion of the oil on canvas in July of 1794, and of the pastel in September of 1794.
John Francis Williams, Jr., a descendant of William J. Williams purchased the painting by 1942, and it has descended in the family. It is now being offered for sale to benefit the Franklin Tree Foundation, a private, non-profit foundation working towards sustainable forestry and agriculture.

PROVENANCE: Helen L. Clark, Washington, D.C., 1921; Helena Pinckney, Cabin John, MD, by 1940; John Francis Williams, Jr., by 1942; thence by descent to the current owner.

REFERENCES: John F. Williams, Jr., William J. Williams: Portrait Painter and his Descendants: Family Records, privately published, 1933. Supplement 1948.

FOOTNOTES:
1. Letter, Governor Henry Lee to General George Washington, June 20, 1792.
2. Letter, General George Washington to Governor Henry Lee, July 3, 1792.
3. Masonic Lodge Records, December 20, 1794.

Auction Details

Day 3

Sloans & Kenyon

November 11, 2007, 10:00 AM EST

7034 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD, 20815, US

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