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He is surrounded with allegorical emblems of his public life in service to his country, which are highly illustrative of the great and tremendous storms which have frequently prevailed. An account in the New York newspaper Time Piece on February 7, 1798, explained: “A full-length of General Washington (large as life) represented in the position of addressing Congress. The sky in the background has dark clouds to the left and a rainbow on the right.
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The ornate chair and table, the columns, and the curtain, while fictional, represent the hall of Congress. The books on the table are titled Federalist-referring to the Federalist Papers that John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1787–88-and the Journal of Congress, which, beginning in 1789, recorded the everyday actions and votes of Congress. The large books under the table-titled General Orders, American Revolution, and Constitution & Laws of the United States-refer to Washington’s roles as commander of the American army and as president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The portrait refers to his past and present leadership. The Lansdowne portrait, undoubtedly Stuart’s grandest achievement, depicts Washington as he appeared as president on public occasions: in a black velvet suit, a white shirt with lace ruffles, black stockings and shoes, and wearing a dress sword. He and Bingham shared a belief in the importance of opening up commercial relations between England and the United States after the end of the war. Lansdowne, as Lord Shelburne, had been prime minister during the initial negotiations for the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution in 1783. American senator William Bingham paid Stuart to paint the portrait as a gift for English statesman William Petty, first Marquis of Lansdowne, hence its modern title. Stuart’s second commission was for the life-size, full-length portrait of George Washington now known as the “Lansdowne” portrait. The original, unfinished portraits are known as the “Athenaeum” images because the Boston Athenaeum library acquired them after Stuart’s death in 1828. This image is also duplicated in reverse on the one-dollar bill. The result was more than seventy-five replicas depicting the president in the now-familiar waist-length pose. Stuart asked Washington’s permission to keep the unfinished portrait of George Washington so that he could copy it. First, Martha Washington commissioned a pair of portraits of herself and the president, which she planned to display at Mount Vernon.
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The success of his first images of Washington, painted in 1795, led to two important commissions. He was already widely recognized for his lifelike representations, which he created with brushstrokes that rarely blend the colors, giving his portraits a recently completed quality. Stuart painted these in Philadelphia in 1796, three years after returning to the United States from Europe. The National Portrait Gallery’s collections feature Gilbert Stuart’s two life portraits of George Washington and his only portrait of Martha Washington. This blogpost originally appeared February 19, 2016 Ellen Miles George Washington ("Lansdowne" portrait) / Gilbert Stuart / 1796 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Acquired as a gift to the nation through the generosity of the Donald W.