Most Americans have seen Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington hundreds of times because it was used for the engraving for the one-dollar bill. But few Americans know the story behind that portrait. The original of that portrait was never finished. When I got my teaching position a long time ago (and no, Washington was not President), I inherited a classroom from a retired teacher. In that classroom were a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence and a framed copy of the Gilbert Stuart portrait. My students would ask me “why is Washington coming out of a cloud?” So, I did some research which allowed me to tell this story.
Stuart was the leading portrait painter in America and had already painted a portrait of Washington in 1795. When Washington sat for the portrait, Stuart tried to lighten the mood. “Now, sir, you must let me forget that you are General Washington and that I am Stuart, the painter.” Washington response put Stuart in his place: “Mr. Stuart need never feel the need for forgetting who he is and who General Washington is.” Ouch! What Stuart didn’t know, until that moment, was Washington was not the sort of man that you joked with. To him, dignity was everything. Anyway, Stuart finished the portrait. One year later, Martha Washington commissioned portraits of herself and her husband. After Washington sat again, Stuart left the portrait unfinished so he could make copies. He made at least 75 (60 survive). He called them his “hundred-dollar bills” and it made him rich. He never did deliver the original to Martha. The portrait is now known as the “Athenaeum Portrait” because after Stuart’s death, his daughter sold it to the museum of that name in Boston. By the way, Washington looks grim, not because he was having to sit for another portrait (although I can’t imagine he was happy about it), but because he had recently gotten a new pair of ill-fitting dentures. No, they were not made of wood. That is a myth. His grandson wrote that they were made for “sea horse” teeth. They called hippos “sea horses” back then. I need to mention that the portrait in my classroom was cropped so there was not all that white space to the left and below.
https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/artwork/george-washington-portrait-by-gilbert-stuart/
https://www.artandobject.com/news/why-iconic-athenaeum-portrait-washington-was-never-finished
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