Washington And Iturbide Portraits Analysis

At the end of the 16 and beginning of the 17 century two North American revolutions were successful and coming to an end leaving a power vacuum that would be filled by two historical figures. The two paintings that have been chosen for this comparison paper are on these two figures and are both portraits of them. These are the Agustin de Iturbide painting by an anonymous painter and the Lansdowne Portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. These two portraits were selected for this paper because of how they relate to one another , and although there are some very noticable differences between the Washington and Iturbide portraits, the similarities are very striking and can not be dismissed. The first portrait is called Portrait of

August as an historic figure was general from New Spain which is now modern day Mexico. “Agustín de Iturbide, was a military man and a Creole born in Valladolid.” August de Iturbide was able to bring independence to Mexico from Spain “Iturbide succeeded in uniting Spanish royalists, conservative Mexirchists, and republicans of various stripes in favor of independence” so he was able to unite the people in order to achieve independence. He was originally a principal royalist general, he would go on and end up turning against the Spanish government. “In 1821, after a decade of sporadic warfare, Mexico achieved independence with relative ease”. Iturbide was an overnight hero who would leverage that and gain leadership of the country. Iturbide would quickly abolish the Mexican parliament, create a dictatorial government, and, for those reasons, would be exiled and executed within two years. This was due to the growing opposition in Mexico due to him alienating himself by being an emperor instead of a president. “Iturbide being shot by a firing squad when he tried to return to Mexico in

August de iturbide however would only go on to hold power for only two years before he was ousted and executed. George Washington wanted a term system and did not want to rule forever while for Augsts case quite the opposite where he was the emperor of mexico and had complete rule and would be until he died. He would also not go on to be remembered by the people of Mexico in the way that Americans remember George Washington. “The new republic was lucky to have, in the person of George Washington, a national hero whose integrity and civic virtues made him a universally acceptable choice for its first president.” This shows how he was seen by his people at the time which is very different to how Iturbide was viewed.“George Washington was the embodiment of republican virtue. Even if he had been so inclined, the ingrained distrust of standing armies in the Anglo-American world would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to take the road that would later be taken by a Bolivar or an Iturbide.” So this shows that if he would have taken Iturbides route of declaring himself an emperor he could have possibly had the same