Washington: Father of a Nation

The line on this print comes from a list of rules Washington copied out as a teenager, and it describes the life he wanted better than the one he got.

When he resigned his commission at the end of 1783, he wrote to Lafayette that he was at last "a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, & under the shadow of my own Vine & my own Fig tree, free from the bustle of a camp & the busy scenes of public life." The phrase comes from the prophet Micah, and he returned to it in his letters for the rest of his life.

He did not get to stay there long. Five years later the country called him back to be its first president, and he served two terms before going home to Mount Vernon for good in 1797.

The print shows him full length and alone in a misty field of browns and dull gold: tricorn hat, blue coat with gold epaulettes, buff waistcoat and breeches, hands clasped behind his back. Light breaks through the haze beside his shoulder, and the words run across it in a flowing dark script, with his name in small serif capitals beneath. One figure, standing by himself, next to that sentence.