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In the autumn of 1785, Mr. Jefferson engaged Mr. Houdon, the most eminent Portrait Sculptor in Paris, to make a statue of Washington for the City of R Richmond. Mr. Houdon, whose Portrait I painted at Paris in 1809, informed me of this commission, and the particulars of his visit to Mount Vernon, where he made, on the living face of Washington, a Plaster mould, preparatory for theclay impression, which was then modelled into the form of a Bust, & immediately before it could shrink by drying, moulded & cast it in Plaster, to be afterwards, in Paris copied in marble.

Among the articles widely circulated through newspapers, to fill up a chapter of fabulous History, an extraordinary one, emanating from some erroneous impressions, states that "Houdon after taking a mould of Washington'sface, persisted to make a cast of his entire person" - The Hero & the Sage (says the writer) the man of supreme dignity, of spotless purity & the most veiled modest, laid his sacred person bare & prone before the eyes of art & affection." "The case of the body being left in the care of his workman, but that of the head reserved in his own hands"

To disprove these statements it is necessary for me to say that Houdon himself informed me that he made the cast alone, not waiting for his workmen, who never joined him, and that the figure was composed in Paris, by means of Pencil Sketches and measurements made at Mount Vernon, and from a Picture in Continental Costume, painted by my Father for that purpose, by order of the Virginia Legislature. It must be observed, that Houdon, having designed the figure of Washington in Paris, and not in the presence of the living original, (and did not finish it till three years afterwards) hasgiven it by the shoulders being thrown back, and b y the projection of the chin, atheatrical air, not that of Washington whose glance was at the Horizon & the level of his associates, This is the more to be regretted as the statue elevated on a Pedestal exaggerates the error; and makes the forehead appear more retreating than itreally is, it should therefore be viewed from an elevated stand. 

When Mr, Delaplaine was about to publish his Gallery of American Charaters, I assembled in my Studio all the Portraits of Washington we could collect; & among them Houdon's Bust, which I placed in such a selected light, as to bring out the most characteristic parts, & to throw into shadow those which I thought were the least expressive. Judge Bushrod Washington, among the members who were invited to the examination, on glancing at it as he entered the Room, exclaimed that he never before had seen so much of likeness in it, although he professed a Bust from the hands of Houdon himself. 

The result of this examination for Mr. Delaphine(sic), was my recommendation that he should have engraved for his work the Profile of Houdon's Bust, as the most-authentic likeness. This advice he took, but it was inaccurately executed. - I have endeavored in a collossal Monochrome to be more correct in delineating it -

A profile of unsurpassed benignity & grandeur of character. This was Washington in his retirement at Mount Vernon, two years after this declaration of Peace - a Countenance radiant with that sublime spirit which afterwards dictated the sacred oracle - his farewell address. Houdon's Bust of Washington, has been so often, remolded & altered that much of its original character in obliterated.