Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
General John Cadwalader
Charles Willson Peale (born Queen Anne's County, MD 1741-died Philadelphia, PA 1827)
ca. 1788
- Medium
- watercolor on ivory
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- sight 1 1/2 x 1 1/4 x 1/4 in. (3.9 x 3.2 x 0.5 cm) oval
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Mary Elizabeth Spencer
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
During the Revolutionary War, General John Cadwalader (1742-1786) commanded troops at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Princeton. He was much admired by his close friend General George Washington, who referred to him as "a military genius." Washington offered Cadwalader the position of Continental brigadier general, but his friend declined, preferring to become a state legislator in Maryland after the war. When Charles Willson Peale painted Cadwalader's likeness, it was intended to ornament a woman's bracelet, and in fact the original fittings for an ornamental band---similar to today's watchbands---are visible along the sides of the miniature's case.
