The Painter and the President: Gilbert Stuart’s Brush with George Washington

This account centers on Gilbert Stuart’s difficult session painting George Washington, whose image later became widely recognizable through the portrait associated with the one-dollar bill. Near the end of his presidency, Washington resisted sitting for Stuart: he disliked portrait sessions and was experiencing dental pain. The book recounts the encounter while explaining how and why portraits were made in the eighteenth century. It also introduces Stuart as a prominent painter and uses a self-portrait to connect that practice with a modern idea of a selfie. Acrylic, pencil, and digital illustrations evoke the era and its painting style.