Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart was the most renowned portrait painter of the first decades of the United States. His unfinished portrait of George Washington, known as ‘The Athenaeum,’ has covered the one dollar bill since 1869. Stuart famously kept the portrait in his studios, selling 130 copies of the painting for $100 each—about $3,000 in 2018. Despite his commercial and critical success, Stuart fought periods of depression that slowed his work, sometimes halting it altogether—to the chagrin of many of his sitters. By the time of his death, in 1828, Stuart successfully painted over 1,000 commissioned portraits, including some of the United States’ first presidents.