GWU Museum captures DC in the 1820s through the eyes of Lafayette, L’Enfant

Cameras are rolling as the audience cracks up and passes around a “rock star” concert T-shirt. Not exactly what you’d expect from a Monday afternoon history lecture.

But those cameras were from C-SPAN, and the “rock star” here — as described by historian Mark Hudson, who created the T-shirt — was 19th-century war general Marquis de Lafayette.

Hudson’s recent talk at The George Washington University Museum centered on this French aristocrat who earned celebrity status in America after playing a key role as a general in the Revolutionary War. In particular, Hudson focused on a later period of Lafayette’s life: his return to the United States in 1824, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the defeat of the British at the Battle of Yorktown.

Invited by President James Monroe, Lafayette visited all 24 states during his two-year tour, which included several trips to Washington. One stop was to Tudor Place Historic House and Garden in Georgetown, where today Hudson serves as executive director. The estate’s collection even includes a punch bowl Lafayette used there.

The modern DC is dotted with various other remembrances of the French war hero, including his namesake Lafayette Square, which includes a statue in his honor.

And as the bicentennial of the general’s U.S. tour approaches in 2024, a project called The Lafayette Trail is striving to create a network of historic sites along his original path across the country, while raising general education and awareness on Lafayette’s contributions to American history. At the museum event, project manager Julien Icher joined Hudson to share details on that effort.

The Lafayette talk on Oct. 22 — part of the “DC Mondays at the Museum” series — was accompanied by a tour of a new exhibit at the GWU Museum on view through Dec. 23. Titled Eye of the Bird: Visions and Views of DC’s Past, the display captures the general era of Lafayette’s visit through artwork and artifacts.

As Hudson noted, this was the period of political calm now known as “the Era of Good Feelings.” He pointed to some memorable events in DC at the time, including the strange national election in 1824 featuring four candidates all from the same Democratic-Republican party, and the first graduating class from Columbian College (now George Washington University) that same year.

In the Eye of the Bird exhibition, the centerpiece works are two large-scale oil paintings that focus on another Frenchman of Lafayette’s era: Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the architect and engineer who designed Washington’s original plan and one of the 20 French officers whom Lafayette had picked for his staff during the American Revolution.

The artist commissioned to create the two new paintings — Peter Waddell, who is artist-in-residence at Tudor Place — created richly detailed overhead scenes of the capital city L’Enfant envisioned.

One of the paintings, “The Village Monumental,” shows historically accurate details of July 17, 1825, the very day L’Enfant died. Grounded in extensive research, the scene includes waterways that previously ran through the city, and a wall that existed around the White House until after the Civil War. The decision to focus on 1825 means that the painting depicts what Lafayette would have seen and experienced on his visits to Washington as part of his U.S. tour, Hudson noted.

Waddell chose to place tourists in the foreground of the painting due to their importance to DC history, he said in an interview. Meanwhile, there’s an image of L’Enfant himself at the right of the painting, admiring the city he created.

While the “City of Light” commonly refers to Paris, Waddell says the term applies to DC as well. Much of L’Enfant’s vision, the artist said in remarks after Hudson’s lecture, remains to this day because of strict height restrictions that are conducive to “broad boulevards, light and sun.”

Though many of L’Enfant’s plans came to fruition, some grander ideas were never realized. Waddell’s second painting, “The Indispensable Plan,” features details the planner imagined, such as a White House five times its current size, and grand houses around the National Mall.

The Eye of the Bird exhibit also includes artifacts of that era plucked from the museum’s Albert H. Small Washingtonia Collection, such as a diary kept by a slave and a cake dish crafted by a local silversmith.

The Small Collection contains a multitude of items — photos, maps, prints, books and more — documenting DC history from the 18th through mid-20th century. Treasures from this collection are often the inspiration for topics in the free weekly “DC Mondays at the Museum” series. In fact, the donation from Small, a philanthropist and third-generation Washington who commissioned the Waddell paintings, formed the foundation of the local history aspects of what’s known formally as The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum.

On Dec. 3, artist Peter Waddell will return for another “Mondays at the Museum” event for a talk titled “Painting L’Enfant’s Washington” on the research that went into creating the two monumental works.