
Read the visual description
A three-storied, white manor house with a rust-red roof and wings extending off both sides sits across an emerald-green lawn lined with tall, sage and dark green trees in this horizontal painting. Straw-brown paths lead to the house from either side of the lawn, where they meet an oval-shaped path directly in front of the house. The grassy area inside the oval is cordoned off with posts and weighted chains. Closer to us, three men, two women, and a gray dog stand on the lawn. Two of the men wear uniforms with navy-blue, button-lined jackets with golden yellow epaulets and collars, dark, tricorn hats, and butter-yellow britches over black, knee-high boots. The third man wears a brown suit with a white collar. Both the women wear white dresses. One has a sky-blue sash around her waist and the other has a black shawl wrapped across her torso, and wears a white bonnet. Two light-skinned people, perhaps a man and a child, walk along the path to our left, wearing gray suits. Four people closer to the house have brown skin. One of them, a woman, stands at the front center of the oval path and other three men approach a door in the wing to our left. One of that trio carries a shovel over his shoulder, one a rake, and the other a staff. A carriage guided by a seated horseman and pulled by four horses enters the scene from our right. To our left and right, covered walkways connect the main house to the side wings. The wing to our right is mostly hidden by trees and cut off by the right edge of the painting. The wing to our left has a teal-blue roof, red brick chimneys, and the same white walls as the manor. The main house has a triangular pediment over the front door and chimneys to each side of the red roof. A spire-like lantern is at the center of the roofline, over the pediment. Faint, wispy white clouds billow against the azure-blue sky above. Centered at the bottom of the scene across a white margin are the words, “A VIEW OF MOUNT.VERNON THE SEAT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.”
National Gallery of Art · Painting
A View of Mount Vernon
American 18th Century
- Date
- 1792 or after
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- image: 58.4 x 89.2 cm (23 x 35 1/8 in.) unframed (entire fireboard): 95.3 x 109.5 cm (37 1/2 x 43 1/8 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 1953.5.89
- Credit line
- Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch
- Time span
- 1776 to 1800
- Department
- CAB
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- American
- exterior
- architecture
- American Naive Paintings
- Naive
- Country home
- Mount Vernon
- Virginia
Provenance
Recorded as from a home in Baltimore, Maryland. (H. Milton Feldman, city unknown), by whom sold in 1949 to Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch; gift to NGA, 1953.
Inscription
across bottom: A VIEW OF MOUNT.VERNON THE SEAT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.
NGA object ID 42492. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.