Portrait of a George Washington

This appears to be one of the numerous copies after Gilbert Stuart's famous portrait of the President now in the Boston Athenaeum (see C.R. Barratt and E.G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart, Exhibition Catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005, p.147-153, fig.39). Stuart embarked on a pair of portraits of George and Martha Washington in 1796, which remained unfinished in his possession on his death in 1828 when they were acquired by the Boston Athenaeum. Stuart himself made approximately seventy-five head-and-shoulder replicas of this portrait (see C.R. Barratt and E.G. Miles, op.cit, pp.154-166).