Washington in 1772

In 1830, George Washington Parke Custis (1781-1857), commissioned American artist Anson Dickson (1779-1882) to paint a miniature copy of a portrait of his step-grandfather George Washington. Dickson created a miniature watercolor after Charles Wilson Peale’s 1772 painting George Washington in the Uniform of a Colonel in the Virginia militia. Dickson later hired engraver James W. Steel (1799-1879) to produce an engraving after his miniature—pictured above.