The portrait of George Washington on the one-dollar bill was painted by Gilbert Stuart, a man who died so deeply in debt that he was buried in an unmarked grave his family later could not find. This episode explores the brilliant and chaotic life of America’s most prominent early portraitist.

We follow Stuart from his childhood above a Rhode Island snuff mill and his stranding in Scotland after his mentor Cosmo Alexander died, to his studies under Benjamin West in London and his breakthrough painting The Skater. Then we trace his flight from creditors to Dublin, his calculated plan to paint Washington, the unfinished Athenaeum portrait he kept and copied about 50 times, the Lansdowne portrait rescued during the War of 1812, and the Jefferson portrait he painted over.

• How a teenage prodigy from colonial Rhode Island lost his mentor and his footing in Scotland
• The Skater, his rise in London, and the lavish spending that drove him to flee to Dublin
• Networking through John Jay to secure a sitting with George Washington
• The unfinished Athenaeum portrait, the copies he sold, and the Lansdowne portrait saved from the burning White House
• His direct painting technique, his famous charm, and his death in poverty in 1828