Where's George?

It's not hyperbole to suggest that the most-viewed painting of all time came from the brush of a Rhode Islander. Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington wound up on the U.S. one-dollar bill more than a century ago. Stuart, who was born and raised in Saunderstown, is considered by many to be America's finest portrait artist. Washington sat for him three times, but it was the "Athenaeum Portrait," which Stuart began in 1796 and never finished, that has earned lasting fame on the Yankee greenback.

In the 1990s Dollar George became an Internet cult hero when a Massachusetts man with too much time on his hands founded the Web site, "Where's George?". Bills stamped "Where's George?" can be logged into the site and tracked around the world. (I finally took the plunge myself last year, when I received a "Where's George?" dollar from Fall River, Mass., and used it to buy coffee in Rhode Island. After 246 days, 20 hours and 44 minutes of waiting, the dollar revealed its whereabouts, ending up in a pile of change 80 miles away in a Hampstead, N.H. store. Exciting stuff, no?)

Forget Elvis and Madonna. From Founding Father to national treasure to history's most famous layabout to Internet icon, George invented the American art of re-invention.