{"id":544580,"date":"2026-01-26T17:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T17:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/544580\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T17:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T17:53:11","slug":"upstate-ny-college-auctions-off-george-washington-painting-used-for-1-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/544580\/","title":{"rendered":"Upstate NY college auctions off George Washington painting used for $1 bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Upstate New York college has auctioned off a portrait of George Washington that inspired his image on the $1 bill.<\/p>\n

The painting, which belonged to Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., went for $2.881 million at Christie\u2019s Rockefeller Center auction house in New York on Friday. That\u2019s well above the initial estimate of $500,000 to $1 million, according to nny360.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The buyer was not publicly identified by Christie\u2019s.<\/p>\n

According to North Country Public Radio<\/a>, the 24.5-inch-by-29.5-inch painting was part of an Athenaeum-style series by Gilbert Stuart, an artist who lived from 1755 to 1828 and painted portraits of the first six U.S. presidents. Clarkson\u2019s painting was a replica made by Stuart himself, originally commissioned in 1804 and owned by fourth U.S. President James Madison. <\/p>\n

\"GeorgeGeorge Washington, c. 1803. Artist Gilbert Stuart. (Photo by Heritage Art\/Heritage Images via Getty Images)Heritage Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The image was later reversed and used as the basis for Washington\u2019s likeness on the U.S. dollar bill.<\/p>\n

Christie\u2019s consultant Martha Willoughby told NCPR that Clarkson\u2019s painting was donated to the school in 1951 by Richard Livingston Clarkson, whose family established the university in the late 19th century. Clarkson bought it in 1929 after several previous owners, including Madison, his wife Dolly Madison, and later industrialist William Aspinwall.<\/p>\n

The painting was sold along with five other special American pieces Friday. Other items included a contemporary broadside edition of the Declaration of Independence that sold for $5,687,000, a draft of the U.S. Constitution auctioned for $7,395,000, and an authorized edition of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln that sold for $6,785,000. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a historic sale on so many levels. We conceived it to celebrate America at 250,\u201d Christie\u2019s Senior Americana Specialist Peter Klarnet said in a statement. \u201cWe assembled works of exceptional importance, and captured the market\u2019s attention. More than that, we are proud that this sale also captured the imagination of so many people and brought a whole new audience to Christie\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Upstate New York college has auctioned off a portrait of George Washington that inspired his image on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":544581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,8015,13081,239858,239859,9882,9243,68740,29664,9958,16220,834,239860,19277,115006,239861,23590,239862,13938,239863,62494,2089,239864,405,403,5226,5225,239865,5228,5227,1069,3234,30909,82869,13082,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,2058],"class_list":{"0":"post-544580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-bestof","11":"tag-c-gilbert","12":"tag-c-gilbert-stuart","13":"tag-century","14":"tag-color","15":"tag-colour","16":"tag-concept","17":"tag-country","18":"tag-first","19":"tag-general","20":"tag-general-washington","21":"tag-george","22":"tag-gilbert","23":"tag-gilbert-stuart","24":"tag-guy","25":"tag-heritage-art","26":"tag-location","27":"tag-major-washington","28":"tag-male","29":"tag-man","30":"tag-national-gallery-of-art","31":"tag-new-york","32":"tag-new-york-city","33":"tag-newyork","34":"tag-newyorkcity","35":"tag-nineteenth-century","36":"tag-ny","37":"tag-nyc","38":"tag-painting","39":"tag-political","40":"tag-politicians","41":"tag-stuart","42":"tag-topix","43":"tag-united-states","44":"tag-united-states-of-america","45":"tag-unitedstates","46":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","47":"tag-us","48":"tag-usa","49":"tag-washington"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}