Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American portrait painter. Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists. His best known work, George Washington, was completed the 1796. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States One-Dollar Bill for over a century. He was the third son of Gilbert Stewart, a Scottish immigrant, and Elizabeth Anthony Stewart. Stuart's father worked in the first colonial Snuff Mill in America, which was located in the basement of the family homestead.
His best known work, the unfinished portrait of George Washington that is sometimes referred to as The Athenaeum, was begun in 1796 and left incomplete at the time of Stuart's death in 1828. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States one-dollar bill for over a century.
Gilbert Stuart produced portraits of over 1,000 people, including the first six Presidents of the United States. His work can be found today at art museums across the United States and the United Kingdom, most notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Frick Collection in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
In 1792, after establishing himself as a fashionable portrait painter in London and Dublin, Stuart returned to the U.S. Stuart returned to the United States in 1793. In Philadelphia, he opened a studio and gained not only a foothold in the art world, but lasting fame with pictures of many important Americans of the day.
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