Thursday, July 24, 2008

Gilbert Stuart's "George Washington"


Artist Jay Rolfe learned that Gilbert Stuart's Anthenaeum portrait of George Washington, the one you always see, was so popular that many people wanted to buy a copy. So Gilbert Stuart made a number of what he called "plurality" paintings, his copies which were almost identical. Many museums have one, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery has two.

In the "American Evolution" exhibit, the older George Washington portrait, painted in 1796-1803 was juxtaposed with Andy Warhol's painting of "Mao" who was the leader of the most populous country in the world. They were right next to each other as the introductory paintings to the whole exhibit. You can see what they looked like next to each other by scrolling back to the post on this blog for July 19, 2008.

Today's photo of the day is the 1803 "plurality" version of Gilbert Stuart's "George Washington." It was painted 170 years before Andy Warhol's "Mao."

This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's signature style, his innovative Pop Art 3-D paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/.

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