Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source

George Washington (Lansdowne Portrait)

Artist: Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828)
Date: 1796
Dimensions: 247.6 x 158.7 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., United States

The Lansdowne Portrait shows George Washington, the first President of the United States, standing full-length in a black velvet suit, his right arm extended in the gesture of an orator, during his last year in office.

A closer look

Stuart surrounded Washington with symbols of the new republic: a sword at his side, books on the Constitution and the laws of the United States on the table, a quill and inkstand, the stars and stripes on the chair, and a rainbow breaking through the clouds outside, a sign of hope after the storms of the Revolution. The grand format and the columns and drapery borrow from European royal portraits, but the subject wears civilian dress rather than a crown. The painting was commissioned as a gift for the British politician the Marquess of Lansdowne, who had supported American independence.

History of the painting

Senator William Bingham of Pennsylvania and his wife Anne commissioned the portrait as a gift for the Marquess of Lansdowne, a British statesman who had supported American independence, and it spent almost two centuries in England. From 1968 it was on long-term loan to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and in 2001, when its owners offered it for sale, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation paid for its purchase so that it could stay there for good.

More by Gilbert Stuart

About this artist →