George Washington and William Lee

~He stands in the shadows on the right of Edward Savage’s monumental group portrait The Washington Family, one hand slipped into his waistcoat (fig. 33). Tucked between a column and an upholstered chair,...

Like other forms of luxury associated with court life and display, ownership of black pages and body servants became increasingly available...

During the closing decades of the eighteenth century, years of revolutionary convulsions on both sides of the Atlantic, not only in politics but in all walks of life and thought and art as well, the ways in which blacks were regarded underwent profound and far-reaching changes ...

John Trumbull’s portraits present to the student of his art a puzzling assortment of the beautiful, the acceptable, and the downright ugly...