Portrait of George Washington

An early and faithful copy of Gilbert Stuart’s famous Athenaeum-type portrait, this likeness of George Washington may have been executed by an artist working in Philadelphia during the early nineteenth century. In meticulous detail, the lace shirt ruffle in this portrait of Washington closely replicates the design of that in Stuart’s Athenaeum-type portrait now in the US Senate Collection at the United States Capitol. The Senate portrait was commissioned probably around 1798 by Edward Penington (1766-1834), a keen supporter of the arts in Philadelphia and whose portrait was painted by Stuart in 1802. See Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart (New York, 2004), pp. 155-156, 231-234, fig. 96, cat. 63.