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Familiar Faces: Gilbert Stuart's George and Martha Washington
March 21, 2006
Ellen Miles curator, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

Ellen Miles discusses Gilbert Stuart's creation in 1796 of his very familiar life portrait of George Washington, together with its companion portrait of Martha Washington, often known as the "Athenaeum portraits" because they were owned by the Boston Athenaeum for more than 150 years. Miles describes the relationship between the Washingtons and the artist, the reason for the incomplete composition of the two portraits, and the immediate and lasting success of the portrait of the President, in contrast to the relative obscurity of the portrait of Martha Washington.

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Image of George and Martha Washington: Portraits from the Presidential Years, Preface by Edmund Morgan
Author: Ellen G. Miles
Publisher: University of Virginia Press (1999)
Binding: Paperback, 56 pages
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