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Palmy Days at Mount Vernon.
Thomas Prichard Rossiter; oil on canvas, 1866. The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association Collections, Gift of Malcolm Matheson III, Emma Matheson Roe, Torrey Matheson Cooke, Charles T. Matheson, Lida Matheson Stifel, and William John Matheson, 2008 Conservation courtesy of The Founders, Washington Committee Endowment Fund [M-4790].
In this imagined scene, the artist depicts Washington sitting at a tea table in the shade of his summer house, surrounded by friends and family with Mount Vernon in the background. The title recalls the expression “the palmy days of yesteryear” and immediately evokes a sense of prosperity and harmony, or halcyon days, which is especially poignant considering Rossiter completed the painting in 1866 as the nation was beginning its long recovery from the devastation of the Civil War. Even though Rossiter supported the Union cause to end slavery, he chose to include an enslaved servant in the composition, an act which seems symbolically to erase the troubles facing the nation during reconstruction and harken back instead to a time when the Washingtons and their home represented an untroubled, idyllic, and indeed civilized past for all Americans to embrace. The individuals gathered around the Washingtons include James and Dolley Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington Lafayette, Tobias Lear, the Lord Fairfax and his sister, Sophia Chew, George Washington Parke Custis, Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis, Lawrence Lewis, Frances Bassett Washington and her two children, Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart, her husband Dr. David Stuart, and their daughter.
