“George Washington”, The Athenaeum Portrait by Gilbert Stuart

“George Washington,” The Athenaeum Portrait by Gilbert Stuart

“George Washington”  by Gilbert Stuart is a portrait of the first president of the United States and is also known as “The Athenaeum.” It is Stuart’s most celebrated and famous work.

Stuart is considered one of America’s foremost portraitists, and his best-known work is this unfinished portrait of George Washington.

This image of Washington has appeared on the United States one-dollar bill for more than a century and on various U.S. postage stamps.

Stuart painted George Washington in a series of portraits, each of them leading to a demand for copies that kept Stuart busy for years.

However, he never completed this original version. After finishing Washington’s face, he held the original version to make the copies. Stuart, along with his daughters, painted over 100 reproductions of The Athenaeum.

This unique portrait was left unfinished at the time of Stuart’s death in 1828.

This famous, unfinished portrait of Washington was eventually owned by the Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States.

The painting was then purchased under controversial circumstances jointly by the National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1980, and the picture spends three years at each institution before being rotated.

George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait)

• Title:                 George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait)
• Artist:               Gilbert Stuart
• Year:                 1796
• Medium:          Oil on canvas
• Dimensions     101 × 88 cm (39.8 × 34.6 in)
• Museum:          National Portrait Gallery   and  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gilbert Stuart

• Name:                  Gilbert Charles Stewart
• Born:                   1755 – Saunderstown, Rhode Island Colony, British America
• Died:                    1828 (aged 72) – Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
• Nationality:         American
• Notable works:
  • George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait)
  • George Washington (Lansdowne portrait)

Gilbert Stuart’s “Athenaeum Portrait” of George Washington

Exploring George Washington in Art

• George Washington’s War Tent
• “George Washington” Lansdowne Portrait by Gilbert Stuart
• “George Washington,” The Athenaeum Portrait by Gilbert Stuart
• “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Leutze
• “The March to Valley Forge” by William B. T. Trego
• “George Washington” by Horatio Greenough

Gilbert Stuart Portraits

A Tour of the National Portrait Gallery of America

• “John Adams” by John Trumbull
• George Washington, Lansdowne Portrait by Gilbert Stuart
• “George Washington,” The Athenaeum Portrait by Gilbert Stuart
• “Mary Cassatt” by Edgar Degas

Explore Museums in Washington, D.C.

• National Gallery of Art
• National Museum of American History
• National Air and Space Museum
• National Museum of African American History and Culture
• National Museum of Natural History
• National Portrait Gallery
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• The Phillips Collection
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• International Spy Museum

Gilbert Stuart’s unfinished painting of George Washington

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“Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.”
– George Washington

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Photo Credit: 1)Gilbert Stuart [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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