That these two portraits, never alienated from the family, are of Charles Francis Adams’ older brothers seems certain. The earliest unmistakable reference to these likenesses occurs in an article, “The Household of John Quincy Adams,” by Harriet Taylor Upton in Wide Awake, 27 (1888):363–377. The paintings are there reproduced, the subject of each identified, and the ownership of both fixed in xviWilliam Clarkson Johnson, then of Newburyport. Johnson (1823–1893) had been the husband of Mary Louisa Adams Johnson (1828–1859), who was the only child of John Adams 2d to live to maturity (see Adams Genealogy). The present owner, Mrs. Waldo C. M. Johnston, is the great-granddaughter of that marriage. Neither on the paintings themselves nor in Mrs. Upton’s article is there indication of artist or date.

However, in that article the reproductions of these paintings appear on the same page with the portrait of Charles Francis Adams painted by Charles Bird King in 1827 (see volume 2:vii, and facing p. 144). With the age of one of the sitters known, then the portraits of the three brothers, each of a sitter of nearly the same age, support a view that each was painted within a year or two of the sitter’s reaching the age of twenty-one. A date of 1820–1825 can thus be assigned to the portraits of George Washington Adams (1801–1829) and John Adams 2d (1803–1834) with some confidence.

Other affinities among the paintings suggest that all were the work of a single artist. Charles Bird King (1785–1862), an American artist who was one of the best known portraitists resident in Washington during the years that John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State and President (1817–1828), had his studio (see volume 1:48) quite close to the Adams residence, 1820–1825, at 1333 F Street, exchanged visits frequently with the Adamses (John Quincy Adams, Diary, passim), and is known to have painted in the years 1819–1827, likenesses of John Quincy Adams, Louisa Catherine Adams, her sister Mrs. Nathaniel Frye Jr., and Charles Francis Adams all from life, as well as two portraits of John Adams after earlier Stuarts (Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John and Abigail Adams, Cambridge, 1967, p. 192–195, 221–222). King would have been the likely artist of portraits of others of John Quincy Adams’ family commissioned within those years. This presumption is not weakened by a comparison of the George Washington Adams and John Adams 2d portraits with two Adams portraits known to have been done by King, that of Charles Francis Adams and the one of John Quincy Adams now in the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island. The sitter’s pose; the placement of the figure and the space it occupies on the canvas; the disposition and treatment of hands; the representation and style of collar, stock, and waistcoat; and the rendering of eyes and mouth—all are strikingly similar in the four paintings.

If the likenesses of George Washington Adams and John Adams 2d are by King, then questions may be raised about the usual identification of George Washington Adams as the subject of the painting reproduced on the left-hand side of the page, and John Adams 2d, book in hands, as the subject of the other. The sole authority for the identification of the separate likenesses is the article in Wide Awake and current family tradition, apparently based on that ascription. Even assuming that the identifications in Wide Awake do in fact accord with the opinion of William Clarkson Johnson, the then owner, the acceptance of Johnson’s verdict, unless he had written records available to him, would be subject to xviilimitations: at John Adams 2d’s death fifty-four years before, his daughter Mary Louisa Adams, subsequently Johnson’s wife, was six years of age and Johnson was eleven; John Adams 2d’s widow, Mary Catherine, had died in 1870; Mary Louisa Adams Johnson in 1859. The only other portraits known that may be likenesses of George Washington Adams and John Adams 2d, two which hang in the Old House at Quincy, provide no help in identification since their association with either brother rests entirely on perceived resemblances to the portraits reproduced here. If the likenesses of the brothers are examined with the assumption that they are by King but without prior identification of the individual subjects, the possibility that the painting said to be of George Washington Adams may be of John Adams 2d and vice versa, becomes more distinct. The four portraits by King of Adams men rather easily fall into two pairs, each pair distinguished by the coats in which the artist has clothed his sitters. The sitters in the John Quincy Adams portrait in the Redwood Library and in the portrait hitherto called John Adams 2d both wear coats of the same type with three brass buttons identically placed. Charles Francis Adams and the sitter for that hitherto called George Washington Adams wear robes or gowns with velvet collars and flowing sleeves. That the two paintings in each pair were done within a fairly short span of time seems evident. The dates 1819–1822 for the John Quincy Adams and 1827 for the Charles Francis Adams portrait are known. The other “brass button” painting would then have been done several years earlier than that of the other gowned figure. Such a conclusion would, in accordance with their ages, point to the identification of the person in the coat with brass buttons as George Washington Adams, the gowned figure as John Adams 2d. Again, the known dates of residence in Washington of each brother would be consistent with the view taken that George Washington Adams’ portrait was painted before that of John Adams 2d. George Washington Adams was in Washington after his graduation from Harvard from 1 October 1821 to 14 August 1823; thereafter only for a month or less in 1825 and in 1828 (Adams Papers files). John Adams 2d, however, was at Harvard until 1823, after which he was in Washington for most of each year until 1827 (volumes 1–2, passim). A reversal of the identifications is supported further to some degree by the “prop” which the artist has placed in the hands of one of the brothers. A book would have been highly appropriate for George Washington Adams, not so for John Adams 2d. See the references to each below, passim.

Addendum: Further information that sustains the conclusions conjectured above came to light only after the text for this volume had been set in pages. What has been said has therefore been allowed to stand without change. Confirmation comes from the discovery in the MS Diary of John Quincy Adams that he continued to sit to Charles Bird King for his portrait until 10 November 1823 and, what is of more significance here, that on 31 May 1823 George was also sitting to King. That King was indeed the painter of George’s likeness, and that the portrait was done in 1823 at the same time that his father’s was completed, makes virtually certain (a) that King xviiialso did the portrait of John, (b) that the sitter for the portrait reproduced on the right-hand side of the page, which is in a number of ways a companion to the John Quincy Adams portrait, was George. We may now reverse the traditionally given identification of the portraits of the two brothers. Fortunately it has been possible to incorporate this correction and new information in the caption under the portraits, facing p. 314 below.