Early next year, Christie’s will offer up an 1804 oil portrait of George Washington by artist Gilbert Stuart. The painting, commissioned by James Madison, the US’s fourth president, served as a model for the US Mint’s engraving for the one dollar bill.
The work is set to be offered with an estimate of $500,000 to $1 million at the house’s “We the People: America at 250” sale during its annual Americana week.
Stuart was an early American painter who was primarily known as a portraitist. He produced portraits of around 1,000 people, including the first six presidents, and his works have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery in D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.
Stuart’s most famous portrait, however, was an unfinished 1796 painting of Washington, dubbed the Athenaeum Portrait. That oil on canvas work, commissioned by Martha Washington, depicts America’s first president at 64 years old, just three years before his death, and helped serve as the primary inspiration for the one dollar bill.
Stuart, who had severe debts in Europe, began making copies of the portrait, the Washington Post reported. One of the 70 to 80 still existing copies—the one set to hit the block at Christie’s—was commisioned by Madison. In 1851, the work was sold to railroad and shipping magnate William Henry Aspinwall, who later helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After changing hands a few times, the portrait was gifted to Clarkston University in upstate New York, primarily a technical and engineering school.
The university recently decided to deaccession the painting to coincide with the 250th birthday of the US, with proceeds to go towards continuing the school’s educational mission.
“We thought it could probably find a good forever home somewhere,” university president Michelle Larson told the Post.
The record for an Athenaeum portrait is $1.06 million, set in 2015. Last year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art deaccessioned a Stuart portrait of Washington, though that work came from his “Vaughn” series. That work sold at Christie’s during the equivalent sale for $2.8 million.
