The life and works of the father of American portraiture. Every American knows the dignified bust portrait of George Washington that hangs in so many schoolrooms. The painter, Gilbert Stuart, was in his day the most famous, sought-after, celebrated, and accomplished portraitist of the infant Republic. This lively biography, the first in more than twenty years, and the only one ever to contain as many as fifty reproductions of Stuart's paintings in color, brings the artist to life in dramatic fashion.--Book jacket.