George Washington- Unfinished Portrait

[Enzie Shahmiri]

This morning I heard a funny story on NPR radio and thought I share it with you. Apparently Martha Washington had commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint two separate portraits, one of her self and the other of her husband. This is the portrait that is the basis for the picture you can find on the dollar bill. The couple would occasionally check on the artist to see the WIP, but the artist kept delaying the delivery date.

Once George Washington paid an unannounced visit and discovered that the artists had been using the unfinished portraits as advertisements to "knock"out copies of the portraits and selling those.

Apparently, president Washington was rather amused by this and let the artist continue making copies for $100 each.

Needless to say the original commissioned pieces were never completed, since the artist died three years later.

[Jeff Fuchs]

Those were interesting times. Revolutionary leaders were god-like figures to the public, and I'm sure there was a great demand for portraits of them.

Fourth of July celebrations were not complete unless they included an appearance by a founding father who had signed the Declaration of Indepenance. The signers reveled in these events, and on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years from the signing date, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both clinging to life in their death beds. They were the last surviving signers.

It's accepted that they lived to see the fourth by virtue of sheer willpower, as the day was so important in those times. Both men died by the end of the day.

[Tom Edgerton]

Enzie--heard the story this morning. Very entertaining.

Don't know if you guys got to the Gilbert Stuart exhibition in DC last year...it was terrific.

One room held a great number--fifteen or so--of the Washington portraits, many of them full figure. A lot of the copies that Enzie refers to above. The really interesting, and hilarious, aspect of seeing so many copies of the same painting was to see how, on some days, Stuart was engaged in making a good painting, and at other times he was obviously phoning it in. Or he may have been tanked...one story on him was that he fled England to Ireland for a while, to stay ahead of his creditors--some of whom were tavern keepers with pretty healthy bartabs that Stuart had run up.

There was really interesting article on him in either American Heritage or Smithsonian around the time of the DC exhibition.

Best--TE

[Julie Deane]

I saw that exhibit - it was really eye-opening to see how many times he had copied that same picture. And all the copies were not there in the exhibit!

The original, done from life, was exhibited, as I recall. It was lifesized and "unfinished", that is, just the heads and shoulders with nothing for a background, just toned canvas. At least, that's my memory of it. And it was loads better than the copies he made later (in my opinion).