Summary: Martin Sullivan, director of NPG, discusses a portrait of George C. Marshall by Thomas Edgar Stephens. George C. Marshall was, according to one expert observer, the "perfect" soldier. Endowed with a quick mind, a good memory, and a superb sense of strategy, he did not particularly relish war. Yet as chief of staff during World War II, he proved to be a masterful orchestrator of military mobilization. In 1945 President Harry Truman remarked that millions of Americans had served the country well in that conflict, but it had been Marshall who "gave it victory." Recorded at NPG,November 13, 2008. Image info: George Catlett Marshall / Thomas Edgar Stephens, c 1949 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, 1951
