| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Gilbert Charles Stuart |
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(b North Kingston, RI, 3 Dec 1755; d Boston, MA, 9 July 1828). American painter, active also in England and Ireland. The son of a snuff grinder, he grew up in Newport, RI. His innate talent for drawing was such that in his early teens he was engaged to paint Dr William Hunter's Spaniels (c. 1765; Hunter House, Newport, RI, Preservation Soc.).
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| Biography: Gilbert Stuart |
Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), American painter, was the classical portraitist of the early republic, painting likenesses that hovered between meticulous representations and idealized generalizations. He created the iconic image of George Washington as the Father of His Country.
Gilbert Stuart was born in North Kingston, R.I., on Dec. 3, 1755. At the age of 13 or 14 he studied art with the Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander in Newport. With Alexander he made a tour of the South and a journey to Edinburgh, where Alexander died in 1772. For about a year Stuart remained, poverty-stricken, in Scotland, but finally, working as a sailor, he managed to get back to America. There he executed a few portraits in a hard limner fashion. With the Revolutionary War threatening, his family, who had Tory sympathies, fled to Nova Scotia, and Stuart sailed for London, where he remained from 1775 to 1787.
For the first 4 or 5 years, Stuart served as the first assistant of American expatriate painter Benjamin West, who had rescued him from poverty. From the first, Stuart showed an interest only in portraiture and had no desire to go into the branch of history painting West practiced. After his apprenticeship, Stuart became London's leading portrait painter, next to Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, whose style he emulated, as in a rare full-length portrait of William Grant of Congalton as The Skater (ca. 1782). For a while Stuart lived in splendor, but being a bad businessman and a profligate spender, he was in constant debt. He lived in Ireland from 1787 to 1792 and then returned to America to make a fortune, he said, by painting Washington's portrait. He worked in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington until 1805, when he permanently established his studio in Boston.
Stuart's Portraits of Washington
From the first, Stuart seems to have been awed by Washington. "There were features in his face," he observed, "totally different from what I had observed in any other human being. The sockets of the eyes, for instance, were larger than what I ever met with before…. All his features were indicative of the strongest passions." Because of the painter's carefree, libertine ways, Washington behaved coldly toward him. It may have been partly because of this that Stuart interpreted Washington in an aloof and imperious manner, rather than in the more intimate way that Charles Wilson Peale did. Yet it was Stuart who created the iconic image of Washington recognized by generations of Americans.
Stuart painted Washington at a time when the general's physique was beginning to break down and he was wearing false teeth. But there is no hint of this in any of Stuart's portraits. Without obvious flattery, still catching the essential character, he presented careful regularizations and glosses. He made three basic versions of Washington as an elder statesman - all remote, dignified, with a wonderful sense of composure, without exterior paraphernalia or insignia to identify his rank - and based all his future portraits of Washington on them.
The three versions were the Vaughan portrait, showing the right side of Washington's face (1795, original destroyed), the full-length Landsdowne portrait (1796), and the unfinished Athenaeum portrait (1796). After a while, Stuart could produce Washington's features rapidly, with little effort. At the end of his life, according to his daughter, he could dash off portraits of Washington at the rate of one every 2 hours. So popular were the portraits that inferior artists made large sums of money by copying the copies.
Stuart's Other Portraits
By 1792 Stuart's portraits had evolved into remote, detached images like the three main versions of Washington. This had not been the case in England, where, following Gainsborough, he included something of the sitter's environment. For example, The Skater has a bit of landscape and other figures skating in the background; the portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1784) contains part of a curtain and a table with a scroll, and the costume is detailed. But in America, Stuart usually painted the head and shoulders against a bare background. At the end of his career, he would suggest but a hint of the lace of the upper part of the coat or dress by a few quick strokes, or he hired a drapery painter to do this work. Stuart came to specialize in painting faces - nothing more.
No one challenged Stuart's position as the foremost American portraitist of his day. Five presidents and numerous leaders of society sat for him. Among Stuart's American portraits are those of Isabella Henderson Lenox (ca. 1810), Gen. Horatio Gates (ca. 1794), and John Adams (1823). The Lenox portrait is a good example of Stuart's drawing-room portraits of wealthy women. The lady's hair is gathered up in a neat bunch in the back, but the curls fall loosely on her forehead; her neck seems to be gracefully elongated and her eyes slightly enlarged. The outlines are soft. There is a hint of a shadow on her neck. Nothing in the background detracts attention from the sitter's face, which is placed equidistant from the two vertical edges of the canvas. The figure is in three quarter pose. The elegant gown is sketchily indicated; the face is rendered with more detail.
In the portrait of Gen. Gates, Stuart caught something of the pomposity of the man, who had desired to replace Washington as commander in chief - but the painting is still flattering. Stuart does not get to the core of his subject's personality as John Singleton Copley does. Gates's bearing is noble, his eyes look boldly at the observer, but no trace of his inner thoughts can be discerned. Stuart paints only the appearance, but the most generous appearance possible.
Stuart's portrait of John Adams shows the former president at the age of 90. Again Stuart paints external appearances, but here he catches sympathetically the look of old age. Adam's hand is held like a claw, his eyes are watery and look ahead vacantly, the muscular structure of his mouth has weakened, and the skin is soft and saggy. Yet there is nothing repulsive or demeaning; there is still about the figure a sense of aristocracy and high office.
Stuart's Technique
Unlike Copley, who laboriously worked first on one part and then on another part of his portraits, Stuart worked on all parts of the canvas at once. Copley was still tied to the linear tradition of the limners, but Stuart utilized the loose, painterly treatment of contemporary English artists. First he blocked in the principal shapes with the brush (there were no preparatory drawings), and then he put in the opaque colors of the face, which he covered with transparent and semitransparent hues. The final effect was one of freshness and spontaneity. The strokes were applied quickly but surely.
Stuart used few colors - vermilion, lake, and a few others - but he had special mixtures for reflections and shadows. The colors were not blended into one another, for he took care to avoid muddiness, yet there were small gradations between one tone and another. As the opaque underpainting shone forth through the transparent hues, the texture of flesh was suggested remarkably well. Stuart once said that flesh "is like no other substance under heaven. It has all the gaiety of a silk-mercer's shop without its gaudiness of gloss, and all the soberness of old mahogany without its sadness." His technique may be observed in the unfinished portrait of Mrs. Perez Morton (ca. 1802). Here the entire canvas has been worked on. But while the face is complete down to its transparent hues, the arms and veil are still in the sketched-in state.
Stuart set the standard for portrait painting in America in the first half of the 19th century. Because he worked so rapidly, he was able to execute over a thousand commissions in America (besides the numerous Washingtons), and his work could be seen widely. All important American portrait painters in the decades following him either studied briefly with him or, more usually, learned from his works. Among these many artists were Thomas Sully, John Wesley Jarvis, Samuel F. B. Morse, Chester Harding, John Neagle, Ezra Ames, Matthew Jouett, and Mather Brown.
Further Reading
A comprehensive biography, including recently discovered material, is Charles Merrill Mount, Gilbert Stuart (1964). Lawrence Park, Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated Descriptive List of His Works (4 vols., 1926), is the most complete catalog of the paintings, with biographical sketches in the first volume.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Gilbert Stuart |
Stuart returned to America, first living in Philadelphia and later settling permanently in Boston, where he became the most celebrated portrait painter of his day. He painted three portraits of Washington from life and more than 100 replicas of these three. His first, the so-called Vaughan type (1795), is a bust with the right side of the face shown; there are at least 15 replicas in existence, one of which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The second, the Lansdowne type (1796), painted for the marquess of Lansdowne, is a full-length study of the president; the original is in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The third, unfinished, the Athenaeum Head (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston, and National Portrait Gall., Smithsonian) named for the version once owned by the Boston Athenæum, was commissioned (c.1796) by Martha Washington. The artist kept the original version while she had to remain content with one of the 75 replicas he subsequently painted. This portrait has been immortalized by the engraving on the U.S. one-dollar bill.
Stuart's elegant and brilliant style, partially modeled after Reynolds and Gainsborough, is seen at its best in such portraits as those of Mrs. Richard Yates (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.), Josef and Matilda de Jaudenes y Nebot (Metropolitan Mus.), and John Adams (N.Y. Historical Society). He painted these and many other notable figures of the day including Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, James and Dolley Madison, Abigail Adams, John Jay, John Jacob Astor, his mentor West, Reynolds, John Singleton Copley, John Trumbell, Washington Allston, and other artists, and a wide variety of members of the mainly American and British elite. The greater part of Stuart's works are in collections in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia.
Bibliography
See R. McLanathan, Gilbert Stuart: The Father of American Portraiture (1986); D. Evans, The Genius of Gilbert Stuart (1999); C. R. Barratt and E. G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart (2004).
| Fine Arts Dictionary: Stuart, Gilbert |
An eighteenth-century American painter. Stuart was especially known for his portraits, including those of George Washington.
| Wikipedia: Gilbert Stuart |
| Gilbert Stuart | |
 A Self Portrait of Gilbert Stuart, Painted in 1778 |
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| Birth name | Gilbert Charles Stewart[1] |
| Born | December 3, 1755 Saunderstown, Rhode Island Colony, Colonial America |
| Died | July 9, 1828 (aged 72) Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Painting |
| Works | George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait) (1796) George Washington (Lansdowne portrait) (1796) George Washington (Vaughan Portrait) (1795) The Skater (1782) Self-Portrait (1778) Catherine Brass Yates (1794) John Jay (1794) John Adams (1824) |
Gilbert Charles Stuart (born Stewart) (December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter from Rhode Island.
Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists.[2] His best known work, the unfinished portrait of George Washington that is sometimes referred to as The Athenaeum, was begun in 1796 and left incomplete at the time of Stuart's death in 1828. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States one-dollar bill for over one century.[2]
Throughout his career, Gilbert Stuart produced portraits of over 1,000 people, including the first six Presidents of the United States.[3] His work can be found today at art museums across the United States and the United Kingdom, most notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Frick Collection in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.[4]
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Gilbert Stuart was born in Saunderstown, Rhode Island on December 3, 1755 and baptized at Old Narragansett Church.[5] He was the third son of Gilbert Stewart,[6] a Scottish immigrant employed in the snuff-making industry, and Elizabeth Anthony Stewart, a member of a prominent land-owning family from Middletown, Rhode Island.[3] Stuart's father worked in the first colonial Snuff Mill in America, which was located in the basement of the family homestead.[7]
Gilbert Stuart moved to Newport, Rhode Island at the age of seven, where his father pursued work in the merchant field. In Newport, Stuart first began to show great promise as a painter.[8] He was tutored by Cosmo Alexander, a Scottish painter.[9] Under the guidance of Alexander, Stuart painted the famous portrait Dr. Hunter's Spaniels, which hangs today in the Hunter House Mansion in Newport, when he was 12-years-old.[10]
Stuart moved to Scotland with Alexander in 1771 to finish his studies. His mentor died in Edinburgh the following year. Attempting briefly and without success to earn a living as a painter, he returned to Newport in 1773.
Stuart's prospects as a portraitist were jeopardized by the onset of the American Revolution and its social disruptions. Following the example set by John Singleton Copley, Stuart departed for England in 1775.[11] Unsuccessful at first in pursuit of his vocation, he then became a protegé of Benjamin West, with whom he studied for the next six years. The relationship was a beneficial one, with Stuart exhibiting at the Royal Academy as early as 1777.[11]
By 1782 Stuart had met with success, largely due to acclaim for The Skater, a portrait of William Grant. At one point, the prices for his pictures were exceeded only by those of renowned English artists Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Despite his many commissions, however, Stuart was habitually neglectful of finances and was in danger of being sent to debtors' prison. In 1787 he fled to Dublin, Ireland, where he painted and accumulated debt with equal vigor.[12]
Stuart returned to the United States in 1793, settling briefly in New York City. In 1795 he moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, near (and now part of) Philadelphia, where he opened a studio.[13][14] It was here that he would gain not only a foothold in the art world, but lasting fame with pictures of many important Americans of the day.
Stuart painted George Washington in a series of iconic portraits, each of them leading in turn to a demand for copies and keeping Stuart busy and highly paid for years.[15] The most famous and celebrated of these likenesses, known as The Athenaeum, is currently portrayed on the United States one dollar bill. Stuart, along with his daughters, painted a total of 130 reproductions of The Athenaeum. However, Stuart never completed the original version; after finishing Washington's face, the artist kept the original version to make the copies.[16] He sold up to 70 of his reproductions for a price of US$100 each, but the original portrait was left unfinished at the time of Stuart's death in 1828.[16] The painting now hangs in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.[16]
Another celebrated image of Washington is the Lansdowne portrait, a large portrait with one version hanging in the East Room of the White House. During the burning of Washington by British troops in the War of 1812, this picture was saved through the intervention of First Lady Dolley Madison and Paul Jennings, one of President James Madison's slaves. Gilbert painted 12 versions of the portrait throughout his life. Most of the U.S. states feature a copy of the painting hanging in their state capitol. In 1803, Stuart opened a studio in Washington, D. C.[17]
Stuart moved to Boston in 1805, continuing in critical acclaim and financial troubles. In 1824 he suffered a stroke, which left him partially paralyzed. Nevertheless, Stuart continued to paint for two years until his death in Boston at the age of 72.[18] He was buried in the Old South Burial Ground of the Boston Common. As Stuart left his family deeply in debt, his wife and daughters were unable to purchase a grave site. Stuart was therefore buried in an unmarked grave which was purchased cheaply from Benjamin Howland, a local carpenter.[19] When Stuart's family recovered from their financial troubles roughly ten years later, they planned to move his body to a family cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island. However, since his family could not remember the exact location of Stuart's body, it was never moved.[20]
At present there is some debate as to the identity of the sitter for one of Stuart's unfinished portraits.[21][22] In 1878 "John Bill Ricketts" was identified by George Washington Riggs, also known as "The President's Banker," and trustee for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as "Breschard, the Circus Rider" and as ""Breschard" was publicly displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1880.[23][24]
Stuart and Ricketts did not sail from Dublin to Philadelphia together as some have claimed,[25]. Owing to Stuart's aversion to being cooped up for weeks with a circus, he booked passage on another ship, the Draper, even though its destination was a different American port.
Peter Grain, cited in the “Circus Rider” NGA provenance as owning the painting in the mid-1800s, and as selling the portrait to George W. Riggs, was a member of the Circus of Pépin and Breschard, and would have been capable of identifying the sitter in Stuart’s portrait as Breschard.
In 1970 the National Gallery of Art changed the identification from "Breschard" " to "Ricketts" and to this day the NGA has failed to explain the reason for this identity change.[26]
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By the end of his career, Gilbert Stuart had taken the likenesses of over one thousand American political and social figures.[27] He was praised for the vitality and naturalness of his portraits, and his subjects found his company agreeable:
Speaking generally, no penance is like having one's picture done. You must sit in a constrained and unnatural position, which is a trial to the temper. But I should like to sit to Stuart from the first of January to the last of December, for he lets me do just what I please, and keeps me constantly amused by his conversation.
– John Adams[28]
Stuart was known for working without the aid of sketches, beginning directly upon the canvas. This was very unusual for the time period.
Stuart's works can be found today at art museums and private collections throughout the United States and Great Britain, including the University Club in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.[4]
Today, Stuart's birthplace in Saunderstown, Rhode Island is open to the public as the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum. The museum consists of the original house Stuart was born in, with copies of paintings from throughout his career hanging throughout the house. The museum opened in 1930.[29]
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