(1742 - 1788)
Portrait painter Robert Edge Pine, son of the engraver John Pine, was born in London and practiced in London and Bath. He moved to the United States, believing his talents were unappreciated in England, and also sympathetic to the American cause. By August 1784 he had settled with his family in Philadelphia, where he was assisted by painter Charles Wilson Peale. In the spring of 1785 he visited Mount Vernon for about three weeks and painted portraits of George Washington and others. Pine intended to paint a series of portraits of prominent men of the Revolutionary era, each illustrating a moment in history. However, after his death many of his paintings were destroyed in a fire in 1803 at Bowen’s Columbian Museum in Boston.
