Background:
George Washington 1732 – 1799 was an American statesman and soldier who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 and was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He served as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and later presided over the 1787 convention that drafted the United States Constitution. As a driving force behind the nation\\\\\\\'s establishment he came to be known as the father of the country, both during his lifetime and to this day.
On 12 December 1799, Washington spent several hours riding over the plantation, in snow, hail and freezing rain. He ate his supper later that evening without changing from his wet clothes. The following day, he awoke with a severe sore throat (either quinsy or acute epiglottitis) and became increasingly hoarse as the day progressed. All the available medical treatments failed to improve his condition, and he died at Mount Vernon at around 10pm on Saturday, 14 December 1799, aged 67.
On 18 December 1799, a funeral was held at Mount Vernon, where his body was interred. Congress passed a joint resolution to construct a marble monument in the United States Capitol for his body, an initiative supported by Martha. In December 1800, the United States House passed an appropriations bill for $200,000 to build the mausoleum, which was to be a pyramid with a base 100 feet square. Southerners who wanted his body to remain at Mount Vernon defeated the measure.
In accordance with his will, Washington was entombed in a family crypt he had built upon first inheriting the estate. It was in disrepair by 1799, so Washington\\\\\\\'s will also requested that a new, larger tomb be built. This was not executed until 1831, the centennial of his birth. The need for a new tomb was confirmed when an unsuccessful attempt was made to steal his skull. A joint Congressional committee in early 1832 debated the removal of Washington\\\\\\\'s body from Mount Vernon to a crypt in the Capitol, built by Charles Bulfinch in the 1820s. Southern opposition was intense, exacerbated by an ever-growing rift between North and South. Congressman Wiley Thompson of Georgia expressed the Southerners\\\\\\\' fears when he said:
....Remove the remains of our venerated Washington from their association with the remains of his consort and his ancestors from Mount Vernon and from his native State, deposit them in this capitol, and then let a severance of the Union occur and behold the remains of Washington on a shore foreign to his native soil.
Washington\\\\\\\'s remains were finally moved on 7 October 1837, along with those of his wife, Martha, to the new tomb presented by John Struthers of Philadelphia. Other members of the Washington family are interred in an inner vault, behind the vestibule containing the sarcophagi of George and Martha Washington.

Bartlett, William H. 1809 - 1854
Was a British artist, best known for his numerous drawings rendered into steel engravings.
Bartlett was born in Kentish Town, London in 1809. He was apprenticed to John Britton (1771–1857), and became one of the foremost illustrators of topography of his generation. He travelled throughout Britain, and in the mid and late 1840s he travelled extensively in the Balkans and the Middle East. He made four visits to North America between 1836 and 1852.
In 1835, Bartlett first visited the United States to draw the buildings, towns and scenery of the north-eastern states. The finely detailed steel engravings Bartlett produced were published uncolored with a text by Nathaniel Parker Willis as American Scenery; or Land, Lake, and River: Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature. American Scenery was published by George Virtue in London in 30 monthly installments from 1837 to 1839. Bound editions of the work were published from 1840 onward.
In 1838 Bartlett was in Canada producing sketches for Willis Canadian Scenery Illustrated, published in 1842.
Bartlett made sepia wash drawings the exact size to be engraved. His engraved views were widely copied by artists, but no signed oil painting by his hand is known. Engravings based on Bartletts views were later used in his posthumous History of the United States of North America, continued by Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward and published around 1856.
William Henry Bartlett died of fever on board of a French ship off the coast of Malta returning from his last trip to the Near East, in 1854.
Bartletts primary concern was to render lively impressions of actual sights, as he wrote in the preface to The Nile Boat (London, 1849). Many views contain some ruin or element of the past including many scenes of churches, abbeys, cathedrals and castles, and Nathaniel Parker Willis described Bartletts talent thus: Bartlett could select his point of view so as to bring prominently into his sketch the castle or the cathedral, which history or antiquity had allowed.

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