In honor of the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the
forty-fourth president of the United States, a marble bust of
the nation’s first president, George Washington, is now on view
in LACMA’s American art galleries. The bust was not made,
however, by an American artist but by a French one—Jean-Antoine
Houdon (1741–1828). Believing sculptors in colonial America were
then too inexperienced to represent Washington for posterity,
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin led the effort to find
the best sculptor in Europe for the commission. The celebrated
young Frenchman was chosen partly because he insisted on
crossing the Atlantic to sculpt Washington in person rather than
relying on existing portraits, a common practice at the time. In
October 1785 Houdon arrived at Washington’s home, Mount Vernon,
where he measured Washington, made a plaster mask of his face,
and executed a clay bust. From these important studies Houdon
carved this marble bust, one of five he completed. Gilbert
Stuart, the painter whose la