George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

This stamp features a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), one of the most celebrated American painters of his era.

The painting shown on the stamp is an oil-on-canvas copy Stuart made of a portrait he did from life in 1796. It measures 28 15/16 inches by 24 1/16 inches and is in the collection of The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. The original work, which Stuart used as a model for this and numerous other copies, is jointly owned by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It is often called the Athenaeum portrait, because it was purchased and given to the Boston Athenaeum after Stuart’s death.