George Washington (George Washington / Lansdowne Portrait) - Gilbert Stuart

George Washington (George Washington / Lansdowne Portrait) - Gilbert Stuart
National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., Estados Unidos
OST - 247x158 - 1796

As the general who led us to victory in the American Revolution and as our first president, George Washington was often painted and sculpted. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the hero's portrait. But it is this portrait that stands for all time as the image that best represents what Washington meant to us when we were a new nation and continues to mean to us in the twenty-first century. It is the one picture that we can say ranks in importance with those sacred founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.We see Washington in 1796, the last year of his two-term presidency. Earlier full-length portraits show him in military uniform, but here he is in civilian dress, revealing that in our democracy the elected executive is the true commander-in-chief. Standing in elegant surroundings suggesting the grandeur of European tradition, Washington is nonetheless not draped like a king, which he refused to be; he is a man powerful only by the people's consent. This was the man who told us what this new kind of leader—an elected president—could be and whose maturity and resolve gave us confidence in our future. The rainbow behind him breaks through a stormy sky. Washington was lucky in his portraitist, and so are we. American-born Gilbert Stuart had eighteen years in Europe to hone his artistry. He was commissioned by Senator and Mrs. William Bingham of Pennsylvania to provide a gift to the Marquis of Lansdowne, an English supporter of American independence. It was copied by Stuart and others as the image of Washington who sustains our national purpose-the Washington every generation of Americans needs to rediscover.Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828).

As a military and political figure, George Washington was a unifying force during the country’s formative years. He fought in the French and Indian War and later served as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. After being unanimously elected as the first president of the United States, in 1789, he installed the Supreme Court and the cabinet, quelled the Whiskey Rebellion, and defeated the Western Lakes Confederacy in the Northwest Indian War (and facilitated the subsequent peace negotiations with the alliance). Washington enjoyed immense popularity at the end of his second term, but he declined to run again, insisting that the United States needed to take proper precautions to avoid hereditary leadership or dictatorship.

While mapping out the composition for this painting, American artist Gilbert Stuart, who had previously worked in England and Ireland, drew from European traditions of state portraiture to evoque Washington’s leadership. The artist made a number of direct references to the newly formed United States, and the pose he chose for the president is believed to allude to Washington’s annual address in front of Congress in December 1795. Stuart completed several replicas of the image, which spread rapidly through popular engravings.