Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart ( Stewart; December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter born in the Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. and on various postage stamps of the 19th century and early 20th century.

Stuart produced portraits of about 1,000 people, including the first six Presidents. His work can be found today at art museums throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Frick Collection in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Biography

Early life

alt=Simple, two-story wooden house. The two doors open directly on to the front lawn.|thumb|upright=1|The [[Gilbert Stuart Birthplace in Saunderstown, Rhode Island]]

thumb|upright=1|Portrait of William Hunter's [[spaniels]]

Stuart was born on December 3, 1755, in Saunderstown, a village of North Kingstown in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and he was baptized at Old Narragansett Church on April 11, 1756. He was the third child of Gilbert Stuart, a Scottish immigrant employed in the snuff-making industry, and Elizabeth Anthony Stuart, a member of a prominent land-owning family from Middletown, Rhode Island.

Stuart moved to Newport, Rhode Island, at the age of six, where his father pursued work in the merchant field. In Newport, he first began to show great promise as a painter. In 1770, he made the acquaintance of Scottish artist Cosmo Alexander, a visitor to the colonies who made portraits of local patrons and who became a tutor to Stuart. Under the guidance of Alexander, Stuart painted the portrait Dr. Hunter's Spaniels when he was 14; it hangs today in the Hunter House Mansion in Newport.

England and Ireland

thumb|left|upright|alt= Highlighted face of a solemn young man, surrounded by a dark background.|1778 self-portrait

alt=A well dressed young man taking graceful steps, arms folded.|thumb|upright=1|[[The Skater, a 1782 portrait of Sir William Grant]]

Stuart's prospects as a portraitist were jeopardized by the onset of the American Revolution and its social disruptions. Although he was a patriot, he departed for England in 1775 following the example set by John Singleton Copley. His painting style during this period began to develop beyond the relatively hard-edged and linear style that he had learned from Alexander. He was unsuccessful at first in pursuit of his vocation, but he became a protégé of Benjamin West in 1777 and studied with him for the next six years. The relationship was beneficial, with Stuart exhibiting for the first time at the Royal Academy in spring of 1777.

By 1782, Stuart had met with success, largely due to acclaim for The Skater, a portrait of Sir William Grant. It was Stuart's first full-length portrait and, according to a rival, it belied the prevailing opinion that Stuart "made a tolerable likeness of a face, but as to the figure, he could not get below the fifth button'". Stuart said that he was "suddenly lifted into fame by a single picture".

The prices for his pictures were exceeded only by those of renowned English artists Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Despite his many commissions, however, he 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.

New York City and Philadelphia

Stuart ended his 18-year stay in Britain and Ireland in 1793, leaving behind numerous unfinished paintings. He returned to the United States with a particular goal of painting a portrait of George Washington and having an engraver reproduce it and provide for his family through the engraving's sale. He settled briefly in New York City and pursued portrait commissions from influential people who could bring him to Washington's attention. and Washington posed for him later that year. The most famous and celebrated of these likenesses, the Athenaeum portrait, is portrayed on the United States one-dollar bill. Stuart painted about 50 reproductions of it. However, he avoided completing the original version. After finishing Washington's face, he kept it to make copies which he sold for $100 each. Thus, the original portrait remained in its unfinished state at the time of his death in 1828. An engraver at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, George Frederick Cumming Smillie, made an etching of the painting which was used on multiple banknotes. A vignette of the portrait appears on the 1899 2-dollar silver certificate, and the one dollar note of (1918 to 2023). United States one-dollar bills featured the image for decades (1918 to 2023).

The painting was jointly purchased by the National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1980, and is generally on display in the National Portrait Gallery.

Another celebrated image of Washington is the full-length Lansdowne portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery. Its historical importance is almost matched by an early forgery based on it which was purchased for the White House. This painting was rescued during the Burning of Washington in the War of 1812 thanks to the efforts of First Lady Dolley Madison and Paul Jennings, one of President James Madison's slaves. Three replicas of the original portrait are accepted as by Stuart. Additional copies were painted by other artists. In 1803, Stuart opened a studio in Washington, D. C.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson paid Stuart $100.00 for a portrait but never received it, because in 1805, Stuart painted another portrait of Jefferson over the 1800 portrait. In 1821, Stuart sent a copy of the 1805 portrait to Jefferson the so called "Edgehill" portrait. The original 1805 portrait became part of Jane Stuart collection until it was damaged in a fire in 1853. In 1937, Orland Campbell acquired the 1805 portrait and discovered the truth. In June 1959, Campbell had an exhibit at Amherst College of the 1800/1805 portrait and his reconstruction of the "lost" 1800 portrait. Campbell also published an account "The Lost Portraits of Thomas Jefferson Painted by Gilbert Stuart Recovered and Studied by Orland and Courtney Campbell" (1959).

Boston, 1805–1828

Stuart moved to Devonshire Street in Boston in 1805, continuing in both critical acclaim and financial troubles. He exhibited works locally at Doggett's Repository and Julien Hall. Predictably, he was sought out for advice by other American artists, such as John Trumbull, Thomas Sully, Washington Allston, and John Vanderlyn. They had 12 children, five of whom died by 1815 and two others of whom died in their youth. Their daughter Jane (1812–1888) was also a painter. She sold many of his paintings and her replicas of them from her studios in Boston and Newport, Rhode Island. In 2011, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. He was buried in the Central Burial Ground at Boston Common.

Stuart left his family deeply in debt, and his wife and daughters were unable to purchase a grave site. He was, therefore, buried in an unmarked grave which was purchased cheaply from Benjamin Howland, a local carpenter. His family recovered from their financial troubles 10 years later, and they planned to move his body to a family cemetery in Newport. However, they could not remember the exact location of his body, and it was never moved. There is a monument for Stuart, his wife, and their children at the Common Burying Ground in Newport.

Legacy

By the end of his career, Gilbert Stuart had painted the likenesses of more than 1,000 American political and social figures. He was praised for the vitality and naturalness of his portraits, and his subjects found his company agreeable. John Adams said:

Stuart was known for working without the aid of sketches, beginning directly upon the canvas. His approach is suggested by the advice which he gave to his pupil Matthew Harris Jouett: "Never be sparing of colour, load your pictures, but keep your colours as separate as you can. No blending, tis destruction to clear & bea[u]tiful effect." Although uneven, he could produce astonishingly strong likenesses.

John Henri Isaac Browere created a life mask of Stuart around 1825. In 1940, the U.S. Post Office issued a series of postage stamps called the "Famous Americans Series" commemorating famous artists, authors, inventors, scientists, poets, educators, and musicians. Gilbert Stuart is found on the 1 cent issue in the artists category, along with James McNeill Whistler, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, and Frederic Remington.

Today, Stuart's birthplace in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, is open to the public as the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum. The birthplace consists of the original house where he was born, with copies of his paintings hanging throughout the house, as well as a separate art gallery in which are displayed several original paintings by both Gilbert Stuart and his daughter Jane. The museum opened in 1931.

File:GStuartgrave.JPG|alt=Marble plaque with an outlay of a feather linked to a piece of chain, and the name "Gilbert Stuart" carved on it.|Memorial tablet located in the Boston Common

File:GilbertStuart ca1825 byJohn HI Browere.png|John H. I. Browere's life mask portrait of Stuart,

File:Gilbert Stuart 1940 Issue-1c.jpg|

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Gilbert Stuart's paintings of Washington, Jefferson, and others have served as models for dozens of U.S. postage stamps. Washington's image from the famous portrait The Athenaeum is probably the most noted example of Stuart's work on postage.

File:George Washington2 1861 Issue-10c.jpg|1861

File:George Washington 1861 Issue-12c.jpg|1861

File:George Washington2 1903 Issue-2c.jpg|1903

File:Washington 1954 Issue2-1c.jpg|1954

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Notable people painted

thumb|George Washington (The Constable-Hamilton Portrait, 1797) [[Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas]]

This is a partial list of portraits painted by Stuart.

Abigail Adams – Second First Lady of the United States, wife of John Adams
John Adams – Second President of the United States
John Quincy Adams – Sixth President of the United States
Charles Humphrey Atherton – United States Representative from New Hampshire from 1815 to 1817
John Jacob Astor – First American multi-millionaire, fur trader, art patron
John Bannister – Owner of Bannister's Wharf in Newport, Rhode Island
Commodore John Barry – Father of the American Navy
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry – Hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in 1814.
thumb|upright=1|Gilbert Stuart painted by [[Jane Stuart, Gilbert Stuart Birthplace]] Ann Willing Bingham – Philadelphia socialite
Horace Binney – Prominent Philadelphia lawyer
Elizabeth Bowdoin, Lady Temple – wife of Sir John Temple, first British consul general to United States, 1785
Hugh Henry Brackenridge – early American writer, Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, and founder of the University of Pittsburgh
Jean Baptiste Casmiere Breschard – Performer and theatrical impresario
Rosalie Stier Calvert – Belgian-born heiress and mother of Charles Benedict Calvert
Mary Willing Clymer – Philadelphia socialite
John Singleton Copley – American colonial portraitist
Thomas Dawes – Early American architect, builder, military leader, politician
Horatio Gates – American Revolutionary War general
King George III – King of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1760–1820
King George IV – King of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1820–30
John Jay – First Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Thomas Jefferson – Third President of the United States
Rufus King – a signer of United States Constitution
Robert Kingsmill – Admiral in Royal Navy during American and French Revolutionary Wars
King Louis XVI – King of France, 1774–92
James Madison – Fourth President of the United States
Samuel Miles – Revolutionary War General and Philadelphia mayor
James Monroe – Fifth President of the United States
Daniel Pinckney Parker – Prominent Boston merchant
John Randolph of Roanoke – Virginia congressman and senator

Portrait gallery

File:John Banister, Jr.jpg|John Banister, Jr., 1774–75

File:Christian Stelle Banister and son.jpg|Christian Stelle Banister and Son, 1774

File:William Curtis 1775, RHS Lindley Collections.jpg|William Curtis, 1775

File:Benjamin Waterhouse by Gilbert Stuart, 1775.png|Benjamin Waterhouse, 1775

File:William Woollett by Gilbert Stuart 1783.jpeg|Portrait of William Woollett, 1783

File:Benjamin West by Gilbert Stuart 1783-84.jpg|Portrait of Benjamin West, 1783–84

File:Gilbert Stuart Sir Joshua Reynolds.jpg|Portrait of Joshua Reynolds, 1784

File:JohnSingletonCopley.jpeg|American artist John Singleton Copley,

File:Brooklyn Museum - Colonel Isaac Barré - Gilbert Stuart - overall.jpg|Portrait of Isaac Barré, 1785

File:Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) - John Philip Kemble - NPG 49 - National Portrait Gallery.jpg|John Philip Kemble, 1785

File:John Jones of Frankley.jpg|John Jones of Frankley, 1785, Birmingham Museum of Art

File:Joseph Brant 2.jpg|Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, 1785, British Museum, London

File:Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) - Sarah Siddons, née Kemble - NPG 50 - National Portrait Gallery.jpg|Sarah Siddons, 1787

File:1stEarlOfClare.jpg|Portrait of the Earl of Clare, 1789

File:Robert R Livingston by Gilbert Stuart.jpeg|Robert R. Livingston, diplomat and Founding Father, 1793–94

File:Gilbert Stuart - Catherine Brass Yates.jpg|Portrait of Catherine Brass Yates 1793–94

File:Entry (1).jpeg|Portrait of Henry Cruger, 1794

File:John Jay (Gilbert Stuart portrait).jpg|Portrait of John Jay, 1794, First Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court

File:1794, Stuart, Gilbert, William Bayard.jpg|William Bayard, 1794, Princeton University Art Museum

File:HoratioGatesByStuart.jpeg|Portrait of Horatio Gates, 1794, Metropolitan Museum of Art

File:PeterGansevoortByStuart.jpeg|Peter Gansevoort, 1794, Munson, Utica

File:Gilbert Stuart Admiral Robert Kingsmill.jpg|Sir Robert Kingsmill, Admiral in Royal Navy during American and French Revolutionary Wars

File:Peter Stuyvesant (merchant).jpg|Peter Stuyvesant, New York landowner and merchant, –1795

Image:1795 JamesSwan byGilbertStuart MFABoston.jpeg|James Swan, 1795, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Image:Gilbert Stuart - Mrs. James Swan (Hepzibah Clarke) - 27.539 - Museum of Fine Arts.jpg|Mrs. Hepzibah [Clarke] Swan, 1808, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

File:George Washington 1795.jpg|George Washington, 1795, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

File:Gilbert Stuart - Martha Washington (Martha Dandridge Custis) - 1980.2 - Museum of Fine Arts.jpg|Martha Washington, c. 1796

File:Gilbert Stuart - George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait) - Google Art Project.jpg|alt=Detailed painting of head and shoulders of Washington. Over half of the canvas is blank.|Stuart's unfinished 1796 painting of George Washington, also known as the Athenaeum Portrait, his most celebrated and famous work

File:George Gibbs.jpg|George Gibbs, 1798, Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island

File:Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart.jpg|The second First Lady of the United States, Abigail Adams, c. 1800–1815

File:John Adams A18236.jpg|The second President of the United States, John Adams c. 1800–1815

File:James Madison by Gilbert Stuart 1804.jpeg|The fourth President of the United States, James Madison, 1804, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

File:Dolley Madison.jpg|Portrait of Dolley Madison, 1804

File:Anna Payne Cutts by Gilbert Stuart 1804.jpeg|Anna Payne Cutts, sister of First Lady Dolley Madison, 1804, The White House

File:George Calvert.jpg|George Calvert, politician and planter, 1804

File:Rosalie Stier Calvert.jpg|Rosalie Stier Calvert, Belgian-born heiress and wife of George Calvert

File:Jérôme Bonaparte by Gilbert Stuart 1804.jpeg|Jérôme Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1804

File:John Carroll Gilbert Stuart.jpg|John Carroll, first Catholic bishop of the United States, , Georgetown University Art Collection, Washington, D.C.

File:WashingtonAtDorchesterHeightsByStuart.jpeg|George Washington At Dorchester Heights, 1806, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

File:Harrison Gray Otis By Stuart.jpg|Harrison Gray Otis, 1809

File:Gilbert Stuart Mrs Harrison Gray Otis.jpg|Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, 1809, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC

File:Gilbert Stuart - John Clark Howard d. 1810 (page 513 crop).jpg|John Clark Howard d. 1810

File:Gilbert Stuart - Major-General Henry Dearborn - 1913.793 - Art Institute of Chicago.jpg|Portrait of Henry Dearborn, 1812

File:Little Turtle.jpg|This lithograph of Little Turtle is reputedly based upon a lost portrait by Gilbert Stuart that was destroyed when the British burned Washington in 1814.

File:Henry Rice MET DP208350.jpg|Henry Rice, Boston merchant and Massachusetts state legislator, c. 1815

File:John Trumbull Gilbert Stuart 1818.jpeg|American artist John Trumbull, c. 1818

File:John Quincy Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1818.jpg|The sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, 1818

File:Louisa Cathering Johnson Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1821-26.jpg|The sixth First Lady of the United States, Louisa Catherine Adams c. 1821–1826, daughter-in law of John and Abigail Adams

File:Gilbert Stuart Thomas Jefferson.jpg|The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, c. 1821, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

File:Gilbert Stuart, James Madison, c. 1821, NGA 56914.jpg|The fourth President of the United States, James Madison, c. 1821, National Gallery of Art

File:GSJamesMonroe.jpg|The fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, c. 1820–1822, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City

File:Gilbert Stuart - Bishop Jean-Louis Anne Magdelaine Lefebvre de Cheverus - 21.9 - Museum of Fine Arts.jpg|Portrait of Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, 1823

File:Gilbert Stuart John Adams.jpg|The second President of the United States, John Adams, 1826

File:Walters Gilbert Stuart George Washington.jpg|George Washington, 1825, one of Stuart's many copies of the Athenaeum Portrait, Walters Art Museum

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References

Bibliography

Park, Lawrence, John Hill Morgan, and Royal Cortissoz (1926). Gilbert Stuart : An Illustrated Descriptive List of His Works. New York: W. E. Rudge.

External links

Gilbert Stuart at the National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gilbert Stuart Biography, National Gallery of Art
Gilbert Stuart at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilbert Stuart Museum Website
Gilbert-Stuart.org 155 works by Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart on ArtCyclopedia
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Gilbert Stuart. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
Gilbert Stuart, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilbert Stuart 2004-2005 exhibit organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (exhibited October 21, 2004 - January 16, 2005) and the National Portrait Gallery; exhibited at the National Gallery of Art March 27 – July 31, 2005
Lawrence Park Research Files on Gilbert Stuart correspondence and notes concerning the history and authentication of paintings by Stuart begun by Lawrence Park and completed by William Sawitzky, resulting in Gilbert Stuart: an Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works.