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GUANGZHOU School, after Gilbert Stuart, Portrait of George Washington,
1798-1801Reverse painting on glass, in the original frame with original backing board. 28 5/8 x 21 1/2in (72.7 x 54.6cm); 34 x 26 5/8in (86.4 x 67.7cm) including frame
注脚
Exhibited and PublishedHong Kong, Hong Kong Maritime Museum, December 2019-April 2019, The Dragon and the Eagle: American Traders in China A Century of Trade 1780-1900, no. 1.23.This reverse glass depiction of George Washington was likely based on a Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) oil portrait brought to Guangzhou in 1798 by Captain John Sword--who purchased the original from Stuart himself. Upon his arrival in Guangzhou, Sword commissioned a hundred reproductions of the Stuart original, but employing the Guangzhou-based artists to use the reverse glass painting technique, with large sheets of imported European glass as the canvas. Upon his return to the United States in 1802, Swords took advantage of the craze of Washington imagery following the first president's death in 1799, selling the Chinese reproductions to patriotic Americans. In an early case of copyright infringement, Gilbert Stuart took John Sword to court to halt the distribution of the reverse glass copies. He eventually won the case, but it took over a year, and by then a majority of the Chinese copies were dispersed. Currently several institutions have copies of the Washington portrait on glass, the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA holds two copies, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has one, with another in the Yale University Art Museum.