Gilbert Stuart painted George Washington so many times that he essentially became the face of early American portraiture. His most famous version, completed in 1796, was never finished — Martha Washington commissioned it, and it hung in her home unfinished for years. That painting became the template for the engraving on the one dollar bill, the image most Americans see before they spend it.
But Stuart was also pragmatic. He had debts in Europe and a steady demand for his work. So he made copies. Between 70 and 80 of those copies still exist, each one a legitimate Stuart painting, each one slightly different in how the light caught Washington's face or the angle of his shoulders.
One of those copies is heading to Christie's next January. It was commissioned by James Madison, the fourth US president, around 1804. For over 170 years it lived in relative obscurity — first owned by railroad magnate William Henry Aspinwall, then eventually gifted to Clarkson University, a technical school in upstate New York. The auction estimate sits between $500,000 and $1 million, though a similar Stuart portrait sold for $2.8 million at Christie's last year.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat makes this moment interesting isn't just that a piece of American history is changing hands. It's that Clarkson University made a deliberate choice to let it go. Michelle Larson, the university's president, told the Washington Post: "We thought it could probably find a good forever home somewhere." The proceeds will fund the school's educational mission — a practical decision that honors both the painting's historical weight and the institution's actual needs.
Stuart himself produced around 1,000 portraits in his lifetime, including paintings of the first six US presidents. His work lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and museums across the country. He's woven into the fabric of how Americans visualize their founding era.
This particular copy won't hang in the White House or a major museum — at least not yet. But somewhere between now and the sale in January, a collector will decide that owning one of Stuart's Washington portraits is worth the investment. The painting will move again, find a new wall, continue its quiet circulation through American cultural memory.
