Washington’s Kitchen, Mount Vernon

In an 1864 painting by Eastman Johnson, an enslaved African American woman sits with three children in front of an open fire in the kitchen that served the mansion at Mount Vernon. The kitchen was located in a separate building a short distance from the main house and connected by a covered colonnaded walkway. The artist visited Mount Vernon in 1857 and painted at least six versions of this kitchen scene between 1857 and 1865.