Washington: A Life

In 1793, portraitist Gilbert Stuart traveled to America, aiming to pay off debts by painting President George Washington. After securing an introduction via Chief Justice John Jay, Stuart met a reserved Washington whose guarded demeanor resisted the artist’s conversational tactics. Stuart nevertheless perceived intense, contained passions beneath Washington’s calm exterior—a view echoed by contemporaries like Jefferson, Adams, and Gouverneur Morris.

Chernow uses this encounter to frame Washington as a leader who mastered self-command and strategic opacity. The Prelude outlines the biography’s goal: Drawing on the expansive Washington Papers to render an authoritative, single-volume portrait.

George Washington’s forebears rose in colonial Virginia through land acquisition, militia service, and local offices after John Washington settled there in 1656. The men of the line often died young, a pattern continued when George’s father, Augustine, died in 1743, leaving the family estate of Ferry Farm, its dependents, and responsibilities under George’s strong-willed mother, Mary Ball Washington.

George’s childhood unfolded across multiple family moves, with his half-brother Lawrence’s military career and Mount Vernon looming large. Lacking a classical education, Washington pursued practical studies, seeking to present himself as socially refined through a careful study of etiquette and self-improvement, and by cultivating discipline, stoic maxims, and the manners of a provincial gentleman among the Tidewater gentry.