Coffee Hour

I Didn't Know He Was a Unitarian, Either

If you close your eyes and try to picture George Washington, chances are the image you see was first created by a Unitarian. Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) painted 104 likenesses of the first American President, representing about a tenth of his overall portrait production. That is saying a lot, since Stuart was not only a prolific painter, but he almost exclusively painted portraits. In fact, there are only ten known Stuart paintings that are not portraits.

Stuart painted a number of Unitarians, including a gently smiling Joseph Priestley and a really remarkable elderly John Adams, whom I hope someday to resemble.

Currently, the American National Gallery of Art is offering an exhibition of Stuart's portraits, which runs through the end of July. For those of us too far from the National Mall to convieniently see the exhibition in person, the Gallery has a great online version. After you check that out, you might also like to listen to National Public Radio's story about Stuart's portraits of Washington, which examines why the portraits are distictive and how they reflected the values of the new American democracy.

Thanks to Frank Schulman, whose This Day in Unitarian Universalist History reminded me that Stuart died on this day in 1828.