The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

Oval glazed bevel featuring Saint-Mémin image of George Washington in profile framed by black enamel border and encircled by black and white champlevé enamel inscription, "Geo: Washington / Ob: 14.Dec.1799 / AE: 68". With cigar-style gold alloy band by Simon Chaudron. Housed in a contemporary leather ring box. Wear to box, very minor tarnishing to inner ring band.

PURPORTEDLY ONE OF FIVE MOURNING RINGS BEQUEATHED BY PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON IN HIS LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, BEARING THE LAST AND PERHAPS MOST ACCURATE CONTEMPORANEOUS IMAGE OF WASHINGTON.

With tensions between the United States and France reaching a boiling point by the summer of 1798, President John Adams appointed his predecessor, George Washington, as Lieutenant General and Commander of the United States Army. In November, Washington went to Philadelphia to organize the military for what seemed an all but inevitable open conflict. During this time he visited the studio of Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin for a sitting in which Saint-Mémin would use a new device - a physiognotrace - by which silhouettes could be accurately traced and then reduced. The resulting image of Washington's profile may be the most accurate made during Washington's lifetime, as well as the very last.

A little over a year later, George Washington would die of a severe throat infection at his Mount Vernon home. While on his deathbed, Washington requested that two wills be brought to him. After carefully examining the first, he handed it to his secretary, Tobias Lear, and requested that it be burned, and then made some minor amendments to the second before declaring it complete. In this last will and testament, George Washington made numerous bequests, notably that his longtime slave William Lee be freed immediately, and that the rest of his slaves be freed upon the death of his wife, Martha. Washington further requested that his shares in the James River Company be given as an endowment to what is now Washington and Lee University.

On line 22 of Washington's will, he wrote, "To my Sisters in law Hannah Washington & Mildred Washington; to my friends Eleanor Stuart, Hannah Washington of Fairfield, and Elizabeth Washington of Hayfield, I give, each, a mourning Ring of the value of one hundred dollars. These bequests are not made for the intrinsic value of them, but as mementos of my esteem & regard."

Mourning rings were quite popular during this period, and were often bequeathed by the deceased in their wills to beloved friends and relatives. Some contained locks of hair, while others contained a high quality image of the departed. It was common for these rings to be worn on the pinky finger so as to make the wearer's association with the departed clear.

As Saint-Mémin and jeweler Simon Chaudron (1758-1846) shared a shop, it is believed that Saint-Mémin supplied the Washington portraits while Chaudron created the pieces of mourning jewelry according to customer specifications; thus, no two of the seven existing mourning pieces look exactly alike. Both Saint-Mémin and Chaudron were French expatriates and were acquainted with many of America's Founding Fathers, with Thomas Jefferson in particular a patron of both. Following Washington's death, Chaudron delivered a eulogy delivered before the French Masonic Lodge l'Aménité on 1 January 1800 in which he declared, "All the friends of glory and liberty flocked to [Washington's] standard, and the proud aggressors of Bunker's Hill soon found that a nation armed with justice and led by a great man, was not the conquest of the day." Shortly after delivering this speech Chaudron placed an advertisement in the Philadelphia Aurora for "Mourning Rings with an elegant Portrait of the late Illustrious General Washington." It is unknown, however, how many, if any, additional items of jewelry may have been created. Only two such pieces outside of the five specified in Washington's will and bearing Saint-Mémin's rendering are known to survive today.

As recorded by Ellen G. Miles in Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America (1994) seven Saint-Mémin mourning rings are known to exist today, located in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery (pendant), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Mount Vernon, one in a private collection, and the current example, previously in the collection of George Washington collector and scholar Dr. Joseph E. Fields. In 2025, a seventh ring in a near-identical style and composition to the present example and descended through the family of the Marquis de Lafayette was donated to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation after selling at Sotheby's the previous year.

PROVENANCE:
Annie S. King, Baltimore; Dr. Joseph E. Fields (1912-1999), American historian and Washington scholar and collector; The Gerald Peterson Collection

REFERENCES:
The present ring was profiled by Elizabeth Bryant Johnston in Original Portraits of Washington, Including Statues, Monuments, and Medals (1882), p.135; John Hill Morgan and Mantle Fielding in The Life Portraits of Washington and Their Replicas (1931); and by Ellen G. Miles in Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America (1994)