The Crusade to Save Those Stuarts

Although it was never finished, it became the most familiar portrait in America. An engraving of it stares serenely from every current $1 bill.* The artist, besieged by requests for his work, churned out at least 70 replicas in his lifetime; countless copiers followed in his brush strokes. The painting is, of course, George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, one of only three Washington portraits painted from life by colonial America's gifted and prolific artist.

For a century and a half, the portrait of George and a matching Stuart of Martha have belonged to the Athenaeum, a private library in Boston-and, in patriotic spirit at least, to all Bostonians. So when the Athenaeum, strapped for money, recently announced the sale of the pair to Washington's National Portrait Gallery for $5 million, the outburst rivaled the shot heard round the world.

Boston Mayor Kevin White led the charge. "Everybody knows that Washington, D.C., has no culture-they have to buy it," raged White. He was not mollified by the stipulation that the paintings would return to Boston once every five years for the next 50 years. To try to stop or at least stall the sale, White asked the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last week for a temporary restraining order. His argument: that $800 of the Stuarts' original purchase price of $1,500 in 1831 had come from a public subscription. Hence there was a "public trust" that forbade the sale of the portraits outside Boston.

Washington returned the volley. "This is the National Portrait Gallery and these are the premier national portraits," said Michael Collins, under secretary of the Smithsonian, which operates the Portrait Gallery. "They are made for each other." He denied leading a "raiding party" on Boston, pointing out that the Athenaeum approached the Washington museum when the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which has borrowed and displayed the works for the past 103 years, could offer only $1 million for them.

At week's end White and Senator Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) announced a citizens' fund-raising drive to "save our Stuarts," and the two museums agreed to postpone the sale until 1980. Meanwhile the local newspapers could not resist some word slinging of their own. "Free George and Martha!" demanded the Washington Post. Sniffed the Boston Globe: "The proposed deal is akin to, say, selling Faneuil Hall to the state of Arizona as a tourist attraction." The New York Times offered its own cheeky compromise: since New York City is equidistant from the feuding cities, why not let George and Martha rest in peace at its Metropolitan Museum?

The dispute highlighted the financial plight of even the great regional museums, which cannot match the buying power of federally funded institutions. Said Howard W. Johnson, president of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: "This isn't parochialism or regional pride. The issue is, how do we retain the cultural strength of our cities?"

* Those who compare the portrait on the dollar bill may wonder why it shows Washington facing right, while in the Stuart he faces left. In 1918 George Smillie, the government engraver responsible for the artwork on the bill, for reasons lost to history deliberately etched Washington's image in reverse. With further artistic license, he made some changes in Washington's clothes and features.

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