Roy Lichtenstein mined the visual clichés of illustration, embracing the look of mass-produced images in his paintings. George Washington, an early work by the artist, was created while he was focusing on black-and-white, single-object paintings of ordinary commercial products. Throughout his career, Lichtenstein referenced art-historical sources in his painting. Based on a woodcut version of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of the first American president, found in a Hungarian national newspaper, Lichtenstein’s canvas also references the likeness of George Washington that appears on the one-dollar bill. Simplified in the artist’s characteristic graphic style, this image includes red and black Benday dots that create the illusion of volume while referencing the flat reproduction of the printing process.