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Shown from the chest up, a cleanshaven, middle-aged man with pale skin and silvery gray hair, wearing a white, ruffled shirt under a velvety black, high-necked jacket, looks out at us in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and he turns his face slightly to look at us with gray eyes under slightly arched eyebrows. He has a long nose and his thin lips are closed in a straight line. Shadows define slightly sagging jowls along his jawline and down his neck. His light gray hair is pulled back from his forehead and swells in bushy curls over his ears. Part of a black ribbon seen beyond his shoulder ties his hair back. Light illuminates the person from our left and creates a golden glow on the light brown background behind him.

George Washington, c. 1821

Gilbert Stuart

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 60-A

The leading portraitist of a new nation, Gilbert Stuart painted each of the first five US presidents from life. Trained in England and Ireland, the artist introduced a looser, brushy style to American portraits, painting figures that were both grand and lifelike.

Stuart was also a shrewd businessman. He made many copies of his presidential paintings, especially those of George Washington, to sell to eager patrons. Stuart reportedly told a friend, “I expect to make a fortune by Washington alone.”

He created just two full sets of the five presidential portraits, meant to be displayed together. One set was partially destroyed in a fire. This is the only surviving complete group.

Dive deeper

Gilbert Stuart’s ambition when he left Dublin in 1793 was to paint the first president of the United States – he supposedly declared to a friend: “I expect to make a fortune by Washington.” After the artist traveled to Philadelphia in the late autumn of 1794 with a letter of introduction from Chief Justice John Jay, the president sat for Stuart sometime the following year. Attracting commissions from prominent patrons in the colonies and abroad, Stuart’s portraits of Washington were a success from the start, and two more such sittings would occur over the next several years.

One of four Stuart portraits of George Washington owned by the National Gallery, this 1821 work is derived from Stuart’s second life portrait from 1796 (now jointly owned by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the National Portrait Gallery). Here, Washington is shown looking to the left, wearing a black velvet suit and a white shirt with a ruffle of lace or linen. The work demonstrates Stuart’s extraordinary ability to capture an individual’s likeness, which was based on a gift for assessing each sitter’s personality through conversation and on his close observation. Each portrait reflects Stuart’s knowledge of anatomy and his belief in theories of physiognomy, which hold that a study of the outward body can reveal a person’s character.

Over the course of his career, Gilbert Stuart painted at least 100 portraits of George Washington, most of them also copies of the 1796 painting. Centuries later, Stuart’s portrayal of Washington remains the best-known image of the United States’ first president—as writer and critic John Neal wrote in 1823, “So, Stuart painted him; and 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.”

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century, pages 265-266, 268-270, and 273, which is available as a free PDF.

Object Data

Medium

oil on wood

Dimensions

overall: 67 x 55 cm (26 3/8 x 21 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge IV in memory of his great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge II, and his father, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III

Accession Number

1979.5.1

Artists / Makers

Gilbert Stuart (painter) American, 1755 - 1828

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Detail Information

Provenance

Colonel George Gibbs [1776-1833], "Sunswick Farm," Astoria, New York;[1] his widow, Laura Wolcott Gibbs [1794-1870], New York;[2] sold through (Jacob Hart Lazarus [1822-1891], New York) in 1872 to Thomas Jefferson Coolidge [1831-1920], Boston;[3] his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III [1893-1959], Boston;[4] his son, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge IV, Boston; sold 1979 to NGA.

[1] On Gibbs see George Gibbs, The Gibbs Family of Rhode Island and Some Related Families, New York, 1933, 18-21, Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols., New York, 1928-1936, reprinted in 10 vols. with 8 supplements, New York, 1944-1988, 4 (part 1):244-245, and Stephen Dow Beckham, "Colonel George Gibbs," In Benjamin Silliman and his Circle: Studies on The Influence of Benjamin Silliman on Science in America, edited by Leonard G. Wilson, New York, 1979, 28-47. Tom Michie's research on these portraits (NGA curatorial files) has been very helpful in writing these entries.

[2] For her dates see Gibbs 1933, 21-25.

[3] Lazarus acted as the Gibbs' agent in the sale. After agreeing upon the price, he wrote Coolidge on 27 June 1872 that he was sending the portraits to Boston the next day with some documents concerning their history. These were his copies of letters written to Mrs. Gibbs in the 1850s certifying that the portraits were painted by Stuart for Colonel Gibbs (copies, NGA curatorial files). On Coolidge see Dictionary of American Biography, 2 (part 2):395, and Emma Downing Coolidge, Descendants of John and Mary Coolidge of Watertown, Massachusetts, Boston, 1930, 351.

[4] Coolidge 1930, 353; his father Thomas Jefferson Coolidge II died in 1912.

Associated Names

Coolidge, III, Thomas Jefferson
Coolidge, IV, Thomas Jefferson
Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson
Gibbs, George, Colonel
Gibbs, Laura Wolcott
Lazarus, Jacob Hart