George Washington's compressed lips in many busts and portraits are exaggerated because he tried to surpress a laugh while artist Joseph Wright was casting Washington's life mask. In Brother Washington's words, "While in this ridiculous attitude, Mrs. Washington entered the room, and seeing my face thus overspread with the plaster, involuntarily exclaimed. Her cry excited in me a disposition to smile, which gave my mouth a twist, or compression of the lips, that is now observable in the busts Wright afterward made."
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