Art Fraud , A 218-year old Cold Case, and the History Detectives From WHS
By Ramin Ganeshram, Executive Director, May 15th, 2019 Those who love history often find themselves thinking about it nearly all the time and in many contexts. Here at WHS our focus is on American history as demonstrated through the local Westport story, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in new discoveries about Ancient Egypt, or 19th Century Europe or Imperial China or the Pre-Colombian Western Hemisphere…you get the idea. It should come as no surprise, then, that even in our off-hours we at WHS chat with each other about history–from discussing what historical novels or bios to read next to what heritage sites we’ll visit over summer vacation to which are our favorite songs on the Hamilton sound track (mine are You’ll Be Back and Right Hand Man, for the record.) That’s why, when I was faced with an intriguing dilemma related to work that I had been personally doing as a historical novelist over the last decade, I enlisted the after-hours aid of Sara Krasne who is WHS’ Archives Manager and current chairperson. More than that, Sara is a talented genealogist and possibly an even bigger history geek than I am. And, together we solved a 218-year-old mystery that had stumped historians for decades revealing new information relating to none other than the life of President George Washington. So, what was our intriguing find? On a personal level, the portrait graced the cover of my novel. More than that as those of you who have visited WHS’ award-winning exhibit Remembered: The History of African Americans in Westport can attest, the difficulty in rebuilding a picture of the lives of enslaved people cannot be overstated. Without that portrait, a tangible link to a remarkable figure was gone. I dwelled and ruminated on a lead based on what the painting …