I just stumbled across a fascinating book in our fabulous juvenile biography collection. When most of us think of George Washington, we probably picture something like the image above- the famous portrait by Gilbert Stuart that also appears on the one dollar bill. But there are many other portraits of Washington and each is as varied as the skills and perspective of the artists. In May of 1798, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, a visitor to Mount Vernon (Washington's home), wrote that there is little likeness between Washington's portraits and the man himself, and Martha Washington agreed with that assessment. So, when the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and James Rees, the Mount Vernon site president, decided to create an exhibit to educate the public about our first president, they took on the challenge of creating three, accurate, life-sized wax sculptures of the man depicting him at three different times of his life: at 19, when he worked as a surveyer, 45, when he was a general, and 57, when he was inaugurated. The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon by Carla Killough McClafferty illustrates how the sculptures came to life as realistic recreations of a man who was never photographed. Follow this account to see how artists used busts sculpted more than two hundred years ago and dentures built to fit Washington's jaw to digitally recreate the structure of his face at three different stages of his life. You will also learn astonishing facts about his life, and you may be surprised by the amount of misperceptions that have influenced our understanding of this founding father. Wooden teeth? No, not so much.
Share this book with your kiddos and the whole family will be amazed by what modern technology and research can reveal about history!
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