George Washington (George Washington / The Athenaeum Portrait) - Gilbert Stuart

George Washington (George Washington / The Athenaeum Portrait) - Gilbert Stuart
National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., Estados Unidos e Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Estados Unidos
OST - 121x94 - 1796

Gilbert Stuart first painted George Washington in 1795 (in a work now known only from copies). That painting was so successful that, according to artist Rembrandt Peale, Martha Washington “wished a Portrait for herself.” She persuaded her husband to sit again for Stuart “on the express condition that when finished it should be hers.” Stuart, however, did not want to part with the picture and left it unfinished so that he could refer to it when producing future commissions. Known as the “Athenaeum” portrait because it went to the Boston Athenaeum after Stuart’s death, this painting served as the basis for the engraving of Washington that appears on the one-dollar bill. John Neal, an early-nineteenth-century writer and art critic, wrote, “Though a better likeness of him were shown to us, we should reject it; for, the only idea that we now have of George Washington, is associated with Stuart’s Washington.”