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Hamilton's First Meeting with George Washington
1856
Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887)
USA: New York, Brooklyn
Oil on canvas
frame: 38-3/4"h X 32-7/8"w x 2"d
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Manney
79.78.1

"Hamilton's First Meeting with George Washington," scene shows George Washington and Alexander Hamilton wearing military uniforms, standing center; Washington holds horse; men digging trench in background; painted in brown, blue, red, beige, white, black; signed "Chappell / 56" on bottom center.


In 1856, history painter Alonzo Chappel created this interpretation of General Washington and a young Alexander Hamilton meeting during the Revolutionary War. Washington and Hamilton first encountered each other in 1775 in New York, when Washington and the Continental army utilized Hamilton's local militia to fight the British. Washington appointed Hamilton his aide-de-camp in 1777. Chappel’s own lithograph of this painting was used as an illustration in a biography, "Life and Times of George Washington," by John Frederick Schroeder, published in 1857.