The Lansdowne portrait is an iconic life-size portrait of George Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. It depicts the 64-year-old president of the United States during his final year in office. The portrait was a gift to former British Prime Minister William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, and spent more than 170 years in England.
Stuart painted three replicas of the Lansdowne, and five portraits that were closely related to it. His most famous replica has hung in the East Room of the White House since 1800. Numerous other artists also painted copies.
First Lady Dolley Madison, George Washington Parke Custis, Paul Jennings, the president’s steward Jean-Pierre Sioussat and Gardener Thomas McGrath saved the White House replica from being destroyed in the August 24, 1814, Burning of Washington, D.C. by the British.Saving the Washington Portrait https://www.whitehousehistory.org/saving-the-washington-portrait
In 2001, to preclude the original Lansdowne Portrait's imminent sale at auction by Sotheby's New York, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. purchased it for $20 million with donations from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.
Jay Treaty The Lansdowne portrait likely (and fancifully) depicts President Washington's December 7, 1795, annual address to the Fourth U.S. Congress. The highly unpopular Jay Treaty, settling claims between the United States and Great Britain left over from the Revolutionary War, had been presented to the U.S. Senate for approval earlier in the year. The Senate held a special session to debate the treaty in June, at which opposition to it had been fierce. Only two-thirds of the 30 senators (the minimum required under the U.S. Constitution) approved the treaty in mid-August, and Washington, who strongly supported the treaty, signed it in late August. In his annual address, delivered to Congress on opening day of its next session, the President acknowledged the struggle over the Jay Treaty, and called for unity.George Washington – Seventh Annual Address to Congress, from The American Presidency Project. There was lingering resentment in the House of Representatives, which expressed its displeasure by declining to appropriate funding for the treaty's implementation until April 1796.Ellen G. Miles, ""Gilbert Stuart's 'Lansdowne' Portrait of George Washington: From Private Diplomatic Gift to State Portrait," lecture given at the National Portrait Gallery, September 25, 2014.
In England, the Lansdowne portrait was celebrated as Washington's endorsement of the Jay Treaty:
The portrait presented by the President to the Marquis of Lansdowne is one of the finest pictures we have seen since the death of Reynolds. The dress he wears is plain black velvet; he has his sword on, upon the hilt of which one hand rests while the other is extended, as the figure is standing and addressing the Hall of Assembly. The point of time is that when he recommended inviolable union between America and Great Britain.The Oracle and Public Advertiser (London), May 15, 1797.
Washington's December 7, 1795, address was the last that he delivered to Congress in person. The following year the President published his Farewell Address in the newspapers, rather than delivering it to Congress.
Stuart Gilbert Stuart and his family were Loyalists, and moved from Rhode Island to Canada early in the Revolutionary War.National Gallery of Art . Gilbert Stuart. Philadelphia (1794–1803). Accessed: October 15, 2019. Stuart himself lived and painted in London from 1775 to 1787, and in Dublin from 1787 to 1793. Following almost eighteen years abroad, the artist returned to the United States in early 1793.
Lord Lansdowne – who as British Prime Minister had secured a peaceful end to the War – commissioned Stuart to paint a portrait of George Washington.William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne (Whig, 1782–1783), from The National Archives (UK.gov). Lansdowne may have placed the order prior to the artist's 1793 departure for the United States. Stuart lived and worked in New York City for a year and a half before moving to Philadelphia in November 1794.Bryan Zygmont, "Gilbert Stuart's Lansdowne Portrait", from Khan Academy. He informed his uncle in Philadelphia of his upcoming arrival: "The object of my journey is only to secure a picture of the President, & finish yours."Stuart to Joseph Anthony, 2 November 1794, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Quoted in Miles, pp. 129–30.
Philadelphia served as the temporary national capital from 1790 to 1800 – while Washington, D.C. was under construction. Stuart was introduced to the President in December 1794, at one of Mrs. Washington's Friday evening "drawingrooms." But it was not until the following fall that Washington granted him a sitting. Meanwhile, Stuart gathered orders for portraits—among his papers is a document titled: "A list of gentlemen who are to have copies of the portrait of the President of the United States." and dated: "Philadelphia. April 20th, 1795." Lord Lansdowne's name was third on the list of thirty-two subscribers.
Sittings According to Rembrandt Peale, President Washington granted a single joint sitting to Stuart and him "in the Autumn of 1795." Stuart was not wholly satisfied with the resulting head-and-bust portrait, but still painted between twelve and sixteen replicas of it. Now known as the "Vaughan-style" portraits, the original of these is in the National Gallery of Art.George Washington (Vaughn portrait) from National Gallery of Art.
While visiting London a decade earlier, Senator William Bingham of Pennsylvania and his wife, Anne Willing Bingham, had sat for a family portrait by Stuart (unlocated). The artist seems to have approached Mrs. Bingham for assistance in getting the President to grant him a sitting for the full-length portrait:
According to Rembrandt Peale, this was the only sitting Washington granted for the Lansdowne portrait.Ellen Gross Miles, "George Washington (The Lansdowne Portrait)," in Gilbert Stuart (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), pp. 166–90. It took place at Stuart's studio (and lodgings) in the William Moore Smith house, at the southeast corner of 5th & Chestnut Streets. With severely limited time, Stuart was forced to concentrate on the President's head and face. There are multiple claims as to who posed for the body of the figure, including his landlord, Smith.
Stuart began the portrait in Philadelphia and completed it in Germantown, then some outside the city limits. To avoid distractions, the artist rented a Germantown house in Summer 1796 and set up a studio on the second floor of its stable. The Binghams had enjoyed Lord Lansdowne's hospitality in London, and persuaded Stuart to allow them to pay for the portrait. Stuart completed the Lansdowne portrait by the fall of 1796, and Senator Bingham paid his fee of $1,000. Bingham had an ornate frame made for the portrait, and arranged for it to be shipped to England in late November. Lord Lansdowne had received the portrait by March 5, 1797, when he mentioned it in a letter. Lansdowne's letter of thanks to Mrs. Bingham survives, but is undated:
A very fine portrait of the greatest man living in a magnificent frame found its way into my hall, with no one thing left for me to do regarding it, except to thank the amiable donor of it. It is universally approv'd and admir'd, and I see with satisfaction, that there is no one who does not turn away from every thing else, to pay their homage to General Washington. Among many circumstances which contribute to enhance the value of it, I shall always consider the quarter from whence it comes as most flattering, & I look forward with the greatest pleasure to the time of shewing you and Mr. Bingham where I have plac'd it.
Replicas Stuart's first replica of the portrait was for the Binghams (now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), and would have been completed before the original left his studio in late 1796. The President and First Lady visited Germantown on January 7, 1797: "Road [rode] to German Town with Mrs. Washington to see Mr. Stuarts paintings."Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington, Volume 6 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976–79), p. 229. The Bingham replica was still in the studio on July 27, 1797, when Robert Gilmor Jr. viewed it.Robert Gilmor Jr., Memorandums Made in a Tour to the Eastern States in the Year 1797 (Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1892), p. 6. The William Kerin Constable replica (now at the Brooklyn Museum) was completed that same month. The Gardiner Baker replica (now at the White House) is presumed to have been the painting commissioned by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in September 1796, likely as a diplomatic gift to France. Pinckney paid for but never retrieved his replica from Stuart's studio, and the artist seems to have resold the portrait to Gardiner Baker by December 1797.Bonnie Barrett Stretch, "The White House Washington, If Stuart Didn't Paint It, Who Did?" ArtNews, October 1, 2004.
Provenance Most of the owners of the Lansdowne Portrait have been Britons, although it spent 35 years owned by American expatriates living in England, and 48 years owned by the British-citizen descendants of American expatriates.
After the death of Lord Lansdowne, his pictures were sold by auction. The Washington was purchased by Samuel Williams, an English merchant, for $2,000. Williams subsequently became insolvent, and his creditors disposed of the Washington by a lottery. Forty tickets were sold, at fifty guineas each. The picture fell to Mr. J. Delaware Lewis, a nephew of Mr. William D. Lewis, of Philadelphia. But few Americans had ever seen the picture, and Mr. William D. Lewis, who was Chairman of the Committee on Art, obtained the loan of it from his nephew for the Centennial Exhibition. It was sent out with the loan collection from England, unpacked at Memorial Hall, and hung up in the British section before its arrival was known to the Fine Arts Committee. An effort was subsequently made to have it transferred to the American section, but it was unsuccessful. At the close of the Exhibition, it was returned to its owner in England.George Champlin Mason, The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894).
Chronology 1796 – Painted by Gilbert Stuart. 1797 – Presented by Senator William Bingham and his wife Anne Willing Bingham as a gift to William Petty, the first Marquis of Lansdowne (died 1805). 1806 – Purchased in March, at the sale of the Marquis's estate by Samuel Williams, an American merchant living in England. 1827 – Purchased through lottery by John Delaware Lewis (1774–1841), an American merchant living in England. 1841 – Inherited by John Delaware Lewis Jr. (1828–1884), son of the American and later a British Member of Parliament 1876 – Exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. 1884 – Inherited by Herman LeRoy Lewis. 1889 – Purchased by Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery; by family descent to Lord Harry Dalmeny. 1968 – Placed by Lord Harry Dalmeny on long-term loan to the National Portrait Gallery.George Washington (Lansdowne Portrait), from National Portrait Gallery. 2001 – Purchased by the National Portrait Gallery, with $20 million from The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The Foundation donated an additional $10 million to renovate the National Portrait Gallery and to fund a traveling exhibition of the portrait.
Description and analysis
The painting is full of symbolism, drawn from American and ancient Roman symbols of the Roman Republic. Stuart painted Washington from life, showing him standing up, dressed in a black velvet suit with an outstretched hand held up in an oratorical manner. Behind Washington is a row of two Doric columns, with another row to the left. Wrapped around and between the columns are red tasseled drapes.