Visitors to the "Gilbert Stuart" exhibition at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art may wonder what's going on. The Met partnered with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery to display 14 of the artist's 100 portraits of the nation's first president. Of the four pictured here, one is the original 1796 Lansdowne (far left); two are faithful Stuart copies of it; and the fourth, with Washington's right arm lowered, is the artist's variation on it. The giveaway, says photographer Enrico Ferorelli, is "the shoes. They are much better in the Lansdowne original."
Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.
| Tweet | Digg |
Comments