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“There I expect to make a fortune by Washington alone.

“When I can net a sum sufficient to take me to America, I shall be off to my native soil,” he confided eagerly to a friend.

Overly fond of liquor, prodigal in his spending habits, and with a giant brood of children to support, Stuart had landed in the Marshalsea Prison in Dublin, most likely for debt, just as Washington was being sworn in as first president of the United States in 1789.įor the impulsive, unreliable Stuart, who left a trail of incomplete paintings and irate clients in his wake, George Washington emerged as the savior who would rescue him from insistent creditors. Though born in Rhode Island and reared in Newport, Stuart had escaped to the cosmopolitan charms of London during the war and spent eighteen years producing portraits of British and Irish grandees. In March 1793, Gilbert Stuart crossed the North Atlantic for the express purpose of painting President George Washington, the supreme prize of the age for any ambitious portrait artist. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Facebook Email This article is more than 12 years old.Įxcerpted from WASHINGTON by Ron Chernow.