During the past few months, one of the Association's most treasured holdings underwent serious study of its physical structure and was restored to its original state. The result has, quite literally, forced us to take a new look at George Washington.

Terra-cotta bust of George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1785, after conservation.

The story begins on the night Of October 2, 1785, when the Mount Vernon household was rousted out of bed by the arrival of several unexpected guests. While guests were nothing new for the Washingtons, who typically made up beds for hundreds of overnight visitors each year, rarely did they arrive so late or with such an interesting mission. Heading the group of four Frenchmen was jean Antoine Houdon, a 44-year-old sculptor, described by Thomas Jefferson as "the first statuary of his age" already noted for his fresh and lively portrayals of such 18th- century luminaries as the French poet and philosopher Voltaire.

Houdon and his three assistants had been sent from Paris by Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, at the behest of the governor of Virginia, to create a statue of George Washington for that state. The sculptor undertook the commission with the understanding that he be allowed to come to America in order to make a life mask of his subject and then to return to France to complete the project. Houdon was so anxious to work on Washington's portrait that the salary he accepted was considerably less than his original asking price. Furthermore, he left another potential client, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, in the lurch, in order to travel to Virginia for this commission. Jefferson informed Washington, however, that the sculptor never had "a moment's hesitation about the present voyage which he considers as promising the brightest chapter of his history."

Houdon and his three assistants stayed at Mount Vernon for two weeks. In an effort to know his subject better, the sculptor followed Washington around and attended a number of social events with him, including the funeral of a neighbor and the wedding of Martha Washington's niece, Fanny Bassett, to George Washington's nephew, George Augustine Washington. On one occasion, Houdon is said to have noticed Washington looking over some horses being offered for sale, when the retired General became so indignant over the trader's asking price that, i.e. ordered the man off his property. It was that proud expression which Houdon hoped to capture in his sculpture.

On October 6, four days after his arrival on the estate, Houdon began work on the bust of Washington. He typically made his models of clay, while the finished versions of his sculptures might be of marble, plaster, clay, or bronze. This clay bust may have been dried at a low temperature, probably in the oven in the Mount Vernon kitchen. (A kitchen oven would not have reached a temperature high enough to "fire" or cause permanent chemical change in the clay body.) Four days later, Houdon used plaster to make a life mask of Ins famous subject. Washington described the preparation of the plaster in his diary, but it was Nelly Custis, Martha Washington's little granddaughter, who later recorded the process of making the life mask:

"I was only six years old at that time, and perhaps should not have retained any recollection of Houdon & his visit, had I not seen the General as I supposed, dead, & laid out on a large table coverd with a sheet. I was passing the white servants Hall & saw as I thought the Corpse of one I considerd my Father, I went in, & found the General extended on his back on a large table, a sheet over him, except his face, on which Houdon was engaged in putting on plaster to form the cast. Quills were in the nostrills [sic]. I was very much alarmed until I was told that it was a bust, a likeness of the General & would not injure him. This is all I recollect."

Houdon took George Washington's barge to Alexandria on Monday, October 17, "with his People, work, and impliments [sic]," in order to catch the stage for Philadelphia the next morning. The sculptor returned to France with the plaster life mask on a separate vessel from his assistants, who carried the rest of his equipment. Before he left, Houdon presented the original clay bust to his subject as a gift. Washington is known to have placed this extraordinary portrait in his study.

The grayish color of the terra cotta led Washington's executors to misidentify the material and describe the bust in the inventory taken after his death as "I Bust Of General Washington in plaister [sic] from the life," valued at $100. As an adult, Nelly and her husband, who was one of George Washington's nephews, considered Houdon's gift to be "the best representation of Gen. Washington's face they had ever seen," as did another nephew, Bushrod Washington. it has remained at Mount Vernon for the past 214 years, one of the few original objects to be transferred to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association when the fledgling organization purchased the estate in 1858.

Over the next two centuries, the rather charming circumstances in which the bust was fashioned, especially its being baked in a simple kitchen oven, would prove detrimental to its survival. It was coated with white paint fairly early in its existence, but only after a layer of dirt had discolored the surface of the unfired clay. A later owner of Mount Vernon, John Augustine Washington, Jr., allowed sculptor Clark Mills to make plaster casts of the bust, sometime between 1849 and 1859. It may have been then that the most extensive problems developed, although it is impossible to say definitely when the damage occurred. By the last years of the 19th century there were major cracks across the chest and neck, the nose was abraded and the tip had broken off, part of the queue and one earlobe were missing, while the other earlobe had a large triangular loss. For twenty-five years, between 1885 and 1910, the bust was removed from display until someone could be found to restore it. On a single day in April, 1910, Antonio Paladini repaired and reinforced the broken areas with plaster of paris, and coated the entire bust with shellac (to protect it from dampness). Later, a thin coat of white paint was added to obscure discolorations and repairs.

This year, in preparation for the bicentennial of George Washington's death in 1999, the Association once again felt that its most treasured, and admittedly fragile, object needed some additional assistance. Fortunately, the project received the financial backing of The Founders, Washington Committee for Historic Mount Vernon, chaired by Mrs. Randall H. Hagner, Jr., Vice Regent Emerita for the district of Columbia. The Association enlisted objects conservator Meg Craft of Baltimore and Shelley Sturman, the head objects conservator at the National Gallery of Art, to undertake the task of studying and restoring the bust.

As a preliminary step, the bust was x-rayed at the National Gallery in order to learn about its physical structure, and samples were taken of the surface paint to better identify past restoration work. Clay samples were also taken to compare with those from other Houdon sculptures, as well as with local Mount Vernon clay and with slave-made pottery excavated at Mount Vernon, in the hopes of determining if the bust was made from materials brought by Houdon from Europe or was formed of locally available clay. We are awaiting the results of these tests. Then, back at the lab in Mount Vernon's new Conservation Complex, Craft, Sturman, and Nicole Miller, Craft's assistant, began the delicate work of removing multiple layers of plaster, shellac, and paint from the 1910 restoration. The conservators soon had a problem on their hands. The low temperature reached in the bake oven back in 1785 meant that the clay was not adequately fired and was still soluble in water. Since the clay would soften upon contact with water and any solvents if these were used to remove those bust-up layers, the conservators had to work by hand with scalpels and dental tools under magnification in order to get down to the delicate beige terra cotta. After more than two months of painstaking work, they began the task of filling cracks and re-gluing detached sections.

The bust during conservation. With half of the paint stripped, it becomes clear that Washington's nose has suffered from damage in years past.

The result of all this study and work has been a decidedly new look for an old and dear friend. Houdon's beautiful details, especially such delicate features as the distinctive pupils and the tiny lines around the eyes, can be seen much more clearly without the obscuring layers of plaster, shellac, and paint. Perhaps the most notable change came with the restoration of the nose, which had been attached incorrectly in 1910. Matching the nose on the bust to that feature on Houdon's life mask led to a distinct alteration in Washington's profile, allowing it to be seen again in its original shape. Another major change, that of removing all the surface paint, plaster, and shellac to reveal the beige clay, made it possible to view the spectacular bust as Houdon created it. With the recent restoration we can finally see, for the first time since the bust was painted over, probably in the early 19th century, Washington's face as the most famous sculptor of his day actually saw it.

Mary V. Thompson,
Research Specialist
Mount Vernon Annual Report, 2000

Selected Bibliography:

Annual Report - Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, 1967 (1968): 10-16. "The Houdon Bust." Annual Report - Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, 1948 (1949): 23-25.

Jackson, Donald, and Dorothy Twohig, editors. The diaries of George Washington. Volume 4. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978.

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., s.v. "Houdon, Jean-Antoine."

Seymour, Charles J. "Houdon's Washington at Mount Vernon Re-Examined." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1948): 137-158.

Whittemore, Frances Davis. George Washington in Sculpture. Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1933.