George Washington, Patriae Pater, c. 1824

George Washington, Patriae Pater, c. 1824
by
Rembrandt Peale (1778—1860)

Oil on canvas; 71.5 inches x 53.25 inches (181.6 cm x 135.3 cm). U.S. Senate, Washington, DC. (First replica by Peale owned by and on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.)

This heroic image of Washington was so popular that Peale went on to create between 75 and 80 replicas with only small variations. In some paintings Washington is in military garb, in others he is in civil dress.

Rembrandt Peale’s Porthole portrait shows Washington as the statesman in civilian dress, the figure set within a trompe l’loeil oval frame simulating stone. The frame expands in the form of a large masonry monument encircled by an oval oak wreath and surmounted by a keystone with the head of Zeus-Jupiter. A Plaque below is inscxribed Patriae Pater. This was a strange painting with perhaps no recent formal precedent beyond the French Rococo memorial portrait type. [from The Peale Family: Creation of a Legacy, 1780—1870; edited by Lillian B. Miller, 1996]

America had a common language, unlike the European nations, none of which was linguistically homogeneous. in 1789 the majority of Frenchmen did not speak French but were divided by a variety of provincial patois. Englishmen from Yorkshire were incomprehensible to those from Cornwall and vice versa. By contrast, Americans could understand one another from Maine to Georgia. It was very obvious why this should be so, said John Witherspoon, president of Princeton. Since Americans were much more unsettled, and move frequently from place to place, they are not as liable to local peculiarities, either in accent or phraseology.

— Gordon S. Wood
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)