If you’re ever asked to picture George Washington, the first image that comes to mind will most certainly be based on Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of the first president. You know the one, where a distinguished Washington, with flushed cheeks, wears a black velvet suit. His powdered hair has been curled and tied with a black ribbon into a “queue,” a ponytail hairstyle that in Western countries has the hair gathered low in a tail, wrapped around leather, and tied with a ribbon.
Just take a look at a dollar bill and you'll see Stuart’s Washington on the front, albeit in a mirrored image of the portrait.
The Three Washingtons
The Washington on our dollar bill comes from Stuart’s Athenaeum Portrait, an unfinished painting of Washington turned to the left. Even though the First Lady had commissioned him to paint pendant portraits (a pair of paintings) of the presidential couple for Mount Vernon, Stuart primarily used the incomplete work as a study for copies of the portrait, which were in high demand.
The Athenaeum Portrait' was one of the three styles of portraits Stuart painted of Washington, based on those he’d painted from life between 1795 and 1796. Washington turns to the right in the bust-length Vaughan Portrait and he turns to the left in the life-size, full-length Lansdowne Portrait.
Stuart made over one hundred portraits of Washington for American and European patrons, and although Stuart kept true to the president’s likeness throughout, he varied the president’s dress. For instance, in an 1805 version of the Athenaeum Portrait, we see more of Washington’s clothes, and they’re similar to the Vaughan Portrait, with a black velvet suit and a lace “jabot” (a decorative fabric falling from the neck). Stuart also softened Washington’s facial features ever so slightly by using loose brushstrokes, making him appear more relaxed. It’s as if Stuart painted him mellowing with age.
Stuart had developed his distinct loose brushwork when in London, where, from 1777 to 1782, he was an assistant to fellow American painter Benjamin West and where Stuart exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts.
“In England my efforts were compared with those of Van Dyck, Titian, and other great painters—but here! They compare them with the works of the Almighty!” he noted, according to the National Gallery of Art.
Painting portraits of the wealthy and famous made Stuart a sought-after portraitist. The first five U.S. presidents sat in front of Stuart’s easel, eager to have their portrait painted by him. “He was, in effect, the unofficial painter to the new nation,” the Museum of Fine Arts Boston notes on its website. His widely copied and circulated Washington images are in our minds’ eye and often in our pockets, on every dollar bill.
