Portrait of Washington

This is not a Victorian penny dreadful but a scholarly antiquarian work published in Boston in 1851. Charles Fox's book documents a portrait of George Washington, reportedly sketched by artist Nathaniel Fullerton in 1776 while Washington reviewed troops on Boston Common. The work contains Fox's account of discovering this portrait in a Boston family's collection in 1847, Fullerton's biography (a young portrait painter of consumptive habit who later died), and documentary evidence—a series of testimonials from prominent elderly Bostonians (Harrison G. Otis, Jeremiah S. Boies, Nathan Gurney, Jabez Ellis, and others) who examined the portrait and confirmed its likeness to Washington as they remembered him from personal encounters in 1776, 1789, or 1790. These witnesses attest to the portrait's accuracy regarding Washington's dignified bearing, countenance, and features.