Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon, 1784 (The Home of Washington after the War) 1859

Thomas Pritchard Rossiter painted “Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon” sometime in the middle of the 19th century. Here, Rossiter imagines a scene of domestic tranquility at George Washington’s estate, most likely in an attempt to visualize a new American aristocracy in the decades after the Revolutionary War. The scene is set on a colonnaded porch that overlooks the Potomac River. Washington and Lafayette are on the left, deep in discussion. Behind them we see women and children, as well as enslaved people tending to the grounds. Rossiter relies on established visual codes to give meaning to the image, such as the composition, which positions Washington at the apex of a balanced pyramidal structure. The painting can be seen as an example of a political image designed to shape and reflect American values. A deeper understanding of the painting can be gleaned by looking into the artist’s papers, the Washington family archives, and other documents of the time. This will allow for more informed judgments about the painting’s relation to the social and institutional context of its making.