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Gilbert Stuart (American, 1755–1828)
Martha Washington (the Athenaeum portrait), 1796
Oil on canvas; 48 x 37 in. (121.9 x 94 cm)
Jointly owned by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (NPG.80.116), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1980.2); William Francis Warden Fund, John H. and Ernestine A. Payne Fund, Commonwealth Cultural Preservation Trust
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Stuart probably conceived these half-length compositions as seated portraits; the heads are slightly off-center allowing for the figures to be seen to the knees, seated in chairs. For Mrs. Washington, he completed only the face and lightly sketched in her white cap. The dark aureole of paint—standard practice in England—enabled Stuart to select colors for the face that would give a successful illusion of volume. It would have been painted over as part of the background when the portrait was completed. Stuart retained this portrait in his studio until his death but never replicated it.
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