A Year With George Washington
On April 11th, 1796, President Washington sent a letter to the painter Gilbert Stuart inquiring whether he was to come to his residence to sit for a portrait. As promised, George Washington sat for the “Athenaeum Portrait”, as it came to be known, but Stuart never finished it and therefore never delivered it to Washington. Stuart kept the painting and used it as a model to create copies, which he called “his 100-dollar bills,” owing to the amount he charged clients for a copy. Ironically, the portrait would become the basis for the engraving on the one-dollar bill.
An American citizen, Stuart fled to England during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. Following the establishment of his London studio, he would paint some of the most famous figures in English society.
Stuart loved his drink and spent like a sailor newly arrived in port. With his wife, Charlotte, he had 12 children, five of whom died, two very young. His profligate ways finally caught up with him as his creditors began to hound him for repayment until he escaped, yet again.
From London, Stuart fled to Dublin, Ireland, in 1787, where he continued his pattern of painting and spending in unequal measure. He had to flee once more, this time back to America. He believed that the great George Washington would be the source of his restitution to the creditors he left behind. As he explained to a nervous friend, “When I can net a sum sufficient to take me to America, I shall be off to my native soil. There, I expect to make a fortune by Washington alone. I calculate upon making a plurality of his portraits . . . and if I should be fortunate, I will repay my English and Irish creditors.”
Stuart continued to paint until his death, even after a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. With all the brilliant works of art he produced, he still left his wife and daughters in dire straits. When he died, they could not even afford to bury him. A local carpenter had to step in to pay the bill. Eventually, his family raised enough money to give him a proper burial, but by that time, they could not remember exactly where he was buried as the grave was unmarked. His grave was never found.
For all his travails, most of them self-inflicted, Gilbert Stuart left an extraordinary legacy in capturing for all time many of the great figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Most notable among them is his “hundred-dollar bill,” George Washington.
Below is the letter that President Washington sent to Stuart, inquiring whether he would sit for a painting commissioned by the Bingham family.
To Gilbert Stuart From George Washington
Monday Evening 11th Apl 1796.
Sir,
I am under promis⟨e to⟩ Mrs Bingham,1 to set for you tom⟨or⟩row at nine oclock; and wishing ⟨to⟩ know if it be convenient to you that I should do so, and whether it shall be at your own house, (as she talked of the State House) I send this note to you, to ask information—I am Sir Your Obedient Servt
Go: Washington
