George Washington is looking good lately, false teeth and all. The first president has weathered the years with his reputation for decency and integrity intact, and with images of him in battlefield regalia in high demand.

Four major portraits of Washington have appeared at New York auctions over the past 20 months.This Saturday, Christie’s is selling an 8-foot-high portrait of Washington by Charles Willson Peale, completed in 1779, for an estimated $10 million to $15 million.

According to a dealer of American paintings, Debra Force, the recent selloff in Washingtoniana can be traced to the strong showing of a Peale portrait sold at a country auction in France in 2002. “It was amazing, the competition and the price, in the range of $5 million,” she said. “That probably brought out the sellers.It’s like a domino effect.”

A three-quarters-length portrait of Washington by Peale sold at Christie’s in May 2004 for $6.2 million, well above its presale estimate. Last November, a three-quarters-length view of Washington by Gilbert Stuart set the record for any American portrait at auction when Sotheby’s sold it on behalf of the New York Public Library for $8.1 million,below its $10 million low estimate. The portrait at one point was owned by Alexander Hamilton. A full-length Stuart portrait of Washington estimated at $6 million to $8 million failed to sell.

Eighteenth-century American portraiture painting remains a specialized field, with private buyers mostly limited to History Channel fanatics and misty-eyed patriots. “There’s a waferthin market for these kinds of pictures,” a dealer, Warren Adelson, said. “It’s primarily institutional.”

But the appearance of so many Washingtons is a testament to the strength of the art market. “It’s a feeling that now is a good time to sell,” Christie’s specialist in American furniture and decorative arts, Martha Willoughby, said.

“The Peale is extremely exciting,” Ms. Force said, adding that it is in good condition for a work of that era. “Some skeptics are saying the Gilbert Stuarts didn’t do well, that doesn’t bode well. But I think Peale is a totally different artist.”

While Stuart’s headshot of Washington is as famous as the dollar bill, Peale (1741-1827) got more of the man in the general. Stuart (1755-1828) painted Washington as an elder statesman, starting his series of portraits in 1795; Peale, who served under Washington at Princeton, painted him when he was leading his illequipped troops to victory.

The Christie’s portrait shows Washington at his full height of 6 feet, in uniform, leaning his left hand on the barrel of a cannon. In the background tiny figures in blue – the Continental army – can be seen leading off the captured redcoats who had holed up in Princeton’s Nassau Hall, which is also in the painting. The style of the painting, Ms. Willoughby said, is “more linear and direct” than that of Stuart, who trained in Europe.

Just two years after the 1777 battle, Peale was commissioned by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania to paint a portrait of Washington,who himself had commissioned the artist to do family portraits seven years earlier. Peale made a total of eight fulllength portraits, all variations on the same image.

Six of them are owned by institutions: the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the United States Capitol, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Colonial Williamsburg, and Princeton University.The location of the seventh has been unknown since 1952, when it was noted in the collection of New York dealer E.J. Rousuck. This version comes from the collection of Mrs. J. Insley Blair, whose descendants are selling it as part of a larger single-owner sale of American furniture expected to bring between $13.5 million and $20.5 million.

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The Blair sale is just one of six marking Americana Week, which kicks off tomorrow with sales of historic silver, folk art,and furniture at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Up to $60 million in weathered maple dressers, silver from the vestries of Connecticut churches, and homespun paintings of cows and clapboard houses is expected to move through the auctioneers.

Christie’s anticipates sales of $23.5 million to $35 million, which would make this its highest Americana sales ever, with the Peale portrait accounting for nearly half of the total.

The highlight of three sales at Sotheby’s, estimated to bring between $15.9 million and $28.1 million, is Edward Hicks’s “The Peaceable Kingdom” (1846-47).Estimated at $2 million to $3 million, it is being sold Saturday afternoon, from the collection of folk art dealer Robert Carlen. The 19th-century Quaker artist painted the scene an estimated 62 times in his lifetime, and this is one of the later versions.

The painting shows lions, cows, and children coexisting tranquilly on the banks of a river, where American Indians and a settler party shake hands. It is an illustration of the prophecy of Isaiah: that the lamb and wolf shall dwell together and the earth’s creatures “shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.”

“Hicks is legitimately a crossover artist – it’s not just rank-and-file folk art collectors interested, there are also the American paintings collectors,” the head of American folk art at Sotheby’s, Nancy Druckman, said.”This is really a distillation of our most treasured beliefs about America and the evolution of the country.”

The 52nd annual Winter Antiques Show also runs from tomorrow until January 29 at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, while the fifth annual American Antiques Show is at the Metropolitan Pavillion on 18th Street, from today until January 22.

SALE TIMES AND VIEWING HOURS

Christie’s
Important American Furniture, Folk Art, Silver, and Prints, including property from the Garbisch Collection from the Sky Club: January 20 at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and January 21 at 2 p.m.
Property from the Collection of Mrs. J. Insley Blair: January 21 at 10 a.m.
Property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Nusrala: January 21 at 2 p.m. Public viewing for all is today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sotheby’s
Important English Pottery: The Harriet Carlton Goldwitz Collection: January 20, 10:15 a.m. Public viewing is today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Important Americana, including property from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Elisha Hanson to benefit the National Gallery of Art: January 20 at 2 p.m., January 21 at 2 p.m., and January 22 at 2 p.m. Public viewing is today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and January 21 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Important Americana from the Collection of Diane and Norman Bernstein, the Lindens, Washington, D.C.: January 22 at 12 p.m. Public viewing is today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and January 21 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.