Washington, Washington Everywhere

Painted portrait of George Washington
George Washington ("Athenaeum" portrait) / Gilbert Stuart / 1796 / Owned jointly with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

The National Portrait Gallery owns more than one hundred portraits of George Washington (1732–1799) in a variety of mediums, including prints, sculptures, and paintings. Although many date from the American Revolution, even more were created during and after Washington’s presidency. His likeness adorned almanacs and illustrated magazine articles; some prints were sold separately and meant to be framed. So many artists asked the president to sit for them that at one point he wrote, “I am so hackneyed to the touches of the Painters pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck, and sit like patience on a Monument, whilst they are delineating the lines of my face.”

One of the most popular and iconic images of Washington was Gilbert Stuart’s “Athenaeum” type likeness, named after the Boston institution that owned it for many years (fig. 1). Commissioned in 1796 by Martha Washington, it was Stuart’s favorite image. He purposely left the original painting unfinished so that he could use it as a model for the numerous copies that the first president’s admirers commissioned for decades. This painting has also served as the basis for the engraving 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.”

Three portraits of George Washington (figure 1, 2, and 3)
Figure 2: George Washington / Unidentified artist / After 1796 / Gift of the McNeil Americana Collection / Conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee / Figure 3: George Washington / William Russell Birch / 1810-1820 / Gift of the McNeil Americana Collection / Conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee / George Washinton / Ellen Wallace Sharples / c. 1803 / Gift of the McNeil Americana Collection / Conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee Caption

Many other artists also copied Stuart’s Athenaeum likeness, in paintings, engravings, and miniatures. The Portrait Gallery owns two miniature portraits copied from Stuart’s likeness. One, meticulously painted in watercolor on ivory (fig.  2), is by an artist whom scholars have not yet identified; it was probably created during the first few decades of the nineteenth century. William Russell Birch created the other in his preferred medium, enamel on copper, around 1810–20 (fig. 3). Birch, working in Philadelphia, made about sixty miniature portraits of Washington. The Portrait Gallery has also acquired Washington’s portrait by Ellen Wallace Sharples (fig. 4). It is one of two watercolor on ivory miniatures she made around 1803 from a 1790s pastel by her husband, James Sharples.

All three miniature portraits are on display in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition until the summer of 2016. They are surrounded by other likenesses of Washington—replicas created by better-known artists such as Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, and Rembrandt Peale. Together they give us a sense of the popularity of Washington’s image in the early nineteenth century. Each of these portraits is in excellent condition today, having received conservation treatment in 2014, funded by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee.

For further reading:

Ellen G. Miles, George and Martha Washington: Portraits from the Presidential Years (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, in association with the University Press of Virginia, 1999)

Wendy Wick Reaves, George Washington, an American Icon: The Eighteenth-Century Graphic Portraits (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 1982)

Tags: 
Presidents