American School, Mid-19th Century

Folk Art Portrait of George Washington

Watercolor and ink on paper

Signed and dated "Matthias Wagner 1854" to lower margin, with additional signatures to upper corners of recto and verso and inscribed date to verso "January 7, 1854."

Twice inscribed "Bought of C. Schitz," with prices and items listed, including coffee, with reported, written lines, "Virtue is our guide to happiness on high" and "Honi soit qui mal y sense," likely a penmanship exercise.

6 x 7 1/4 inches.

The second inscription, rendered in Middle French, translates to "shamed be he who thinks evil of it." While famously recognized as the motto of the British Order of the Garter, it holds a more localized significance here: the phrase is featured on the seal of the "Block House" at Fort Pitt, the oldest and largest British fortification still standing in North America. Originally erected in 1764 as a defensive redoubt in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the structure escaped the demolition that claimed the rest of the fort after the Revolution, surviving as a private residence.

As the artist was likely of school age writing lines in 1854, he would have been of enlistment age by the outbreak of the Civil War. According to military service records, a Matthias Wagner did enlist as a private on August 22, 1862. He served with Co. F, Ohio 107th Infantry and mustered out on July 10, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. hough listed as an Ohio resident, it is possible that Wagner was familiar with the Fort Pitt Block House, given its significance as the oldest extant structure in the Ohio Valley.

George Washington, believed to be the subject of this drawing, is inexorably linked to the history of Fort Pitt. In 1753, Washington, then a young major, first identified the site’s great strategic potential. He returned five years later with the Forbes Expedition to secure the valley and oversee the initial preparations for the fort's construction. Even as his stature grew, Washington’s ties to the site remained: he returned in 1770 for a diplomatic summit with British officers and Native American leaders to assess land holdings. Ultimately, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in 1779, he brought his history with the fort full circle by appointing Colonel Daniel Brodhead to oversee its defenses.