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‘1812: A Nation Emerges’ A National Portrait Gallery exhibition, ranging from oil paintings to sculpture to the emerging science of photography, explores the events and personalities of a war that helped define a young nation.
Mather Brown's "Portrait of Major John Norton as Mohawk Chief Teyoninhokarawen," an oil on canvas, c. 1805. The tribal chief, born to a Cherokee father and a Scottish mother, was later adopted into the Mohawk tribe. He led Iroquois warriors into battle with U.S. forces at the Battle of Queenston Heights and others. His published journal offers a firsthand account of the War of 1812 and life among the Cherokees.
Yale Center for British Art/Paul Mellon Fund
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"Dying Tecumseh," a marble sculpture by Ferdinand Pettrich, carved in 1856. Tecumseh united several Native American tribes and allied with the British against the United States in the War of 1812; the confederacy he led surrendered to William Henry Harrison after the Battle of the Thames in 1813.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
"Perry's Victory on Lake Erie," an oil on canvas by Thomas Birch, circa 1814. Many works of the period celebrated American naval victories, which were among the nation's few military successes in a war marked by British troops' sacking and burning of the White House.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Gilbert Stuart's 1816 oil-on-wood portrait of Commodore Thomas Macdonough. Macdonough commanded American naval forces that defeated the British at the Battle of Lake Champlain.
National Gallery of Art
Gilbert Stuart's 1804 oil-on-canvas portrait of Dolley Madison, the wife of James Madison, president during the War of 1812.
White House Historical Association
"The Battle of New Orleans," an oil-on-canvas painted in 1856 by Dennis Malone Carter, depicts Andrew Jackson's victory over British forces seeking to seize the city and the territory that the United States gained in the Louisiana Purchase. The battle was fought before news reached the United States of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war.
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The Historic New Orleans Collection
Charles Willson Peale's 1818 portrait of Henry Clay, who as House speaker and leader of the "War Hawks," was a pivotal figure in the U.S. decision to declare war on Britain. He helped arrange the appointment of William Henry Harrison to command the Army of the Northwest and was a member of the U.S. delegation that negotiated the war-ending Treaty of Ghent.
Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent/ Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection
Sir Thomas Lawrence's 1809-10 portrait of Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, better known as Lord Castlereagh. He was Britain's foreign secretary during the War of 1812 and the creator of the collective European security system brought into being at the Congress of Vienna.
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National Portrait Gallery, London
"Forest Scene on the Tobihanna: Alleghany Mountains," a hand-colored aquatint by Karl Bodmer, a Swiss painter of the American West who was renowned for his paintings of Native Americans.
Rare Books Division, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
A portrait of Robert Ross, artist unknown. Ross was a British major general whose forces routed a hastily organized American militia at the Battle of Bladensburg and then moved into Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol in retaliation for American raids into Canada. He was killed by American snipers the following month during the Battle of Baltimore.
Private Collection; National Portrait Gallery
A red velvet dress owned by Dolley Madison, circa 1810-20. Legend has it that the dress was made from the red velvet curtains that Madison rescued from the White House — along with a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington — before the British burned it in 1814. After the destruction of the White House, she described the events: "Two hours before the enemy entered the city ... I sent out the silver (nearly all) and velvet curtains and General Washington's picture."
Greensboro Historical Museum, North Carolina
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National Portrait Gallery
Gilbert Stuart's 1804 portrait of James Madison, president during the War of 1812.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Thomas Whitcombe's 1814 oil on canvas, "12 at Midnight; The Hibernia Attempting to Run the Comet Down," depicts a July 19, 1814, attack by the American privateer Comet against the Hibernia, a British merchantman. The Hibernia's crew beat off the attack in a nine-hour fight in which 12 of the 22 crew members were killed or wounded.
Mr. and Mrs. Drew Peslar; National Portrait Gallery
Rembrandt Peale's oil portrait, circa 1813, of William Henry Harrison, the future president who commanded U.S. forces in battles with the British and their Native American allies in the Northwest Territories.
Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Herbert Lee Pratt Jr.
"Margaret Bayard Smith," an oil on canvas, circa 1829, by Charles Bird King. Smith, who was born in 1778 and died in 1844, was an author whose literary fame came from a collection of letters and notebooks published in 1906 as "The First Forty Years of Washington Society." Her husband was a friend of Thomas Jefferson who founded the newspaper National Intelligencer when the federal government moved from Philadelphia to Washington.
Redwood Library & Athenaeum, Newport, R.I.
A daguerreotype of Paul Jennings by E.C. Perry, date unknown. Jennings, born in 1799, was James Madison's slave and manservant; he was part of Madison's household staff at the White House. He helped rescue Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington from the British burning of the White House. He was eventually freed from slavery by Daniel Webster, became an abolitionist and authored one of the earliest White House memoirs. His sons fought with the Union Army in the Civil War; he died in Northwest D.C. at the age of 75.
Sylvia Jennings Alexander
Rembrandt Peale's portrait of James Monroe, 1817-1825. Monroe was secretary of state and secretary of war under President James Madison before succeeding him as president.
James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library, Fredericksburg
"Georgetown and City of Washington," by George Beck, circa 1795.
Arader Galleries, Philadelphia
William Rush's plaster bust of Gen. Winfield Scott, who helped lead attempted U.S. invasions of Canada during the War of 1812 and later became the longest-serving general in American history in a 47-year career. A hero of the Mexican-American War, he devised the Anaconda Plan, the strategy used to defeat the Confederacy in the Civil War.
National Portrait Gallery
Charles Willson Peale's 1819 oil portrait of Andrew Jackson, commander of U.S. forces in the Battle of New Orleans and later, as the nation's seventh president, the architect of the brutal Indian removal policies.
Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Gilbert Stuart's 1803 portrait of Albert Gallatin, the Swiss-born ethnologist, politician, diplomat and member of Congress who was also the longest-serving Treasury secretary. He held that post from 1801 to May 1813 under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and helped arrange financing for the Louisiana Purchase.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilbert Stuart's oil-on-mahogany-panel portrait of Thomas Jefferson, who, after his presidency, supported the War of 1812. As president, he began the naval expansion that paid off in the war.
Smithsonian Institution and Monticello
An oil on canvas by John Archibald Woodside, circa 1814, expressed a common American sentiment in the war as well as pride in U.S. naval forces, which won a series of battles against the Royal Navy.
Erik Arnesen
FEATURED PHOTO GALLERIES
Photos of the day
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The Herndon Climb
The Herndon Monument climb is the traditional culmination of plebe year at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Eye on entertainment
Ben Stiller, Jerry Seinfeld, Emma Stone, 2 Chainz, Tyrese Gibson, Susan Boyle and more.
Animal views
Fun and fascinating creatures around the world.
Ethiopia’s salt trail
For centuries, merchants have traveled to Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression with caravans of camels to collect salt from the surface of the vast desert basin. The mineral is extracted...
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