THE PAINTER AND THE PRESIDENT

An account of the rocky relationship between the U.S.’s first president and his most famous portrait painter.

“They did not,” as Albee puts it in a nutshell, “hit it off.” Dubbed an “infernal chatterbox” by the grumpy elder statesman, Gilbert Stuart was in the habit of reeling off amusing stories and “corny jokes” to relax his subjects as he worked. Still, both painter and sitter well understood “the power of art”—and the two stuck with each other long enough for the former to break through the latter’s reserve, which was exacerbated by the pain of bad dentures, to capture a more animated expression so well that the unfinished image of 1796 has remained by far the best-known portrait of Washington or any president. Stuart went on to paint portraits of five more chief executives, which Innerst incorporates, with the painter’s “selfie” and other works, into droll caricatures of 18th-century dignitaries and the busy artist adroitly wielding his brush with many a vigorous “dab” and “swish.” A timeline at the end daubs in further biographical details about the disparate duo, and the whole not insignificant historical anecdote is capped by closing comments on Washington’s “tooth troubles” and why his picture on the dollar bill has him facing the other way. The result is a humorous yet enlightening work that humanizes seemingly distant or imposing figures.

A lighthearted, illuminating, and thought-provoking look at a brief but meaningful historical moment.