William Winstanley was an early American painter born in England and transferred to the United States as a young man. He is credited as one of the very first American landscape painters and was active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Winstanley has been criticized by some art historians for his “sterile recipes” for creating landscapes. In essence, they say that he used his conventional English art training to create landscapes that looked calculated and perfectly composed. As a result, his American landscapes look more like the English countryside than New England.

It is thought that in 1793, Winstanley sold then President George Washington two of his landscapes paintings of the Hudson River. This high profile sale indicates that Winstanley was at the very least moderately successful and probably sold his landscapes all over New England.

It is also rumored that Winstanley may have been the actual artist behind the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington that hangs in the East Room of the White House today. Stuart denied painting the portrait in one report saying “I did not paint it, but I bargained for it.” Winstanley is tied to the painting because he was commissioned to pack and ship it to the White House directly, and it is insinuated that he may have copied the piece for Stuart.