If you've ever examined a $1 bill, the star of Christie's next big sale will look awfully familiar. On Jan. 23 in New York, the auction house will offer the 1804 Gilbert Stuart oil portrait of George Washington that helped shape the image now printed on US singles. The work, which is expected to fetch between $500,000 and $1 million, offers "the kind of magnificent story of America that collectors of American art want," art historian Carrie Rebora Barratt tells the Washington Post. It was commissioned by James Madison and has spent two centuries moving between founding fathers, railroad tycoons, and even frat-house pranksters.
The story starts with Stuart's debt problem. Fresh from a stint in a Dublin debtors prison in the 1790s, the Rhode Island native returned to the US convinced Washington's face could rescue his finances, per the Post. After an introduction from Chief Justice John Jay got him in front of the president, Stuart went on to produce more than 100 portraits of America's first president, known as the Athenaeum portraits. The one commissioned by Madison and prominently displayed in his home shows Washington as a weathered but reluctant leader in his mid-60s, captured with quick, visible brushwork.
After Madison, the painting passed to 19th-century shipping and railroad magnate William Henry Aspinwall, then cycled through a series of prominent collectors before landing in 1951 at Clarkson University in upstate New York. In 1968, three fraternity members from another college swiped what they assumed was a copy as a prank, only to later discover it was the real deal. They abandoned it in a Buffalo church, were arrested, and eventually had their records cleared. Clarkson, which has no art museum, is now selling the painting with the hope it will "find a good forever home," says President Michelle Larson.
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