Ritratto dell'Athenaeum

This is the face on the American one-dollar bill, and it was never finished. Gilbert Stuart painted George Washington from life in 1796, when the president was 64 and a few years from death. Martha Washington had commissioned it and wanted to keep it. Stuart had other ideas. He deliberately left the portrait incomplete so he could hold on to it and keep painting from it, and he did exactly that, turning out around 130 copies after Washington died and selling them at 100 dollars each. He reportedly called this original his hundred-dollar bill. Notice how far the finish goes and where it stops. The head is worked up in full detail while the body and background fall away into bare, sketchy brown. In 1869 an engraving after this head was put on the actual one-dollar note, where it has stayed.