GILBERT STUART (1755-1828)
Gilbert Stuart’s portraits of George Washington are among his best-known works. He was particularly skilled at rendering a likeness that captured the personality of the individuals whose portraits he produced. Stuart’s colors were warm and glowing and his paintings have a freely spontaneous quality that seems to capture a fleeting moment in time.
Gilbert Stuart, born December 3, 1755 in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, was the youngest of three children. His father, Gilbert Stewart, had emigrated from Scotland. His mother, Elizabeth Anthony Stewart, was from a prominent family in Middletown, Rhode Island. They named their young son Gilbert Charles Stewart after Bonnie Prince Charlie. However later, when he changed the spelling of his last name, Stuart also dropped his middle name.
His father, who was a snuff grinder, had built a home complex that included a snuff mill. The mill proved to be a financial failure. When Gilbert Stuart was six years of age, the family moved to Newport, Rhode Island. In Newport, Stuart displayed both artistic and musical talent at an early age. As a child, he was given paints and brushes by the family physician and studied art with a local portrait painter, Samuel King. At age thirteen, he received a commission to paint portraits of Mr. and Mrs. John Bannister.
Stuart’s painting of Dr. Hunter’s spaniel dogs, produced when he was fourteen, is known by several similar names: Dr. Hunter’s Spaniels, Dr. Hunter’s Dogs, and The Hunter Dogs, dated c. 1769. In the composition, the two brown and white spaniels lie together on a beige-colored rug. The larger dog, stretched out under a small table, is apparently asleep. The smaller dog lies alongside and snuggled against the larger spaniel with it’s long-eared head turned toward the viewer, the soft-brown eyes focused dreamily as though just rousing from a comfortable nap.
In 1770, Gilbert Stuart met and was apprenticed to a Scottish painter, Cosmo Alexander, who became his art teacher. When Alexander went from Newport to South Carolina, Stuart accompanied him. From there Alexander returned to Scotland, in 1771, and young Stuart was allowed to go to Europe with him. Unfortunately, Alexander died within a short period of time leaving Gilbert Stuart alone and penniless in a foreign land. Unable to support himself as an artist in Scotland, in 1773 he returned to America by earning his passage to Newport as a sailor. The next few years, he remained in Newport. The portraits Stuart produced in America, between 1773 and 1775, reflect the rather stiff poses typical of the colonial style portraiture, as in his painting Mrs. John Bannister and her Son, c. 1774.
At the beginning of the American Revolution, Stuart sailed for England in 1775, at age twenty. He planned to establish himself as a portraitist in London; however he found the city already overrun with artists seeking commissions to paint portraits of clients. For the next two years, Stuart supported himself by utilizing his musical talent. He worked as a church organist, which allowed him to earn a meager living. Unable to save the money that would enable him to return to painting full time, Stuart turned to the famous American expatriate, Benjamin West, for help. According to Henry Tuckerman, in his Book of the Artists published in 1867, Gilbert Stuart resided in Benjamin West’s home for a period of time while he was becoming established as a professional artist in London.
Gilbert Stuart studied under West and displayed a high degree of artistic skill. During that period, Stuart mastered the European style in portraiture. He progressed from West's student to his assistant, a position he held for several years. West, who preferred to concentrate on paintings depicting historical subjects, left much of the portraiture to Stuart who was particularly skilled at rendering a likeness that captured the personality of the individual. His paintings were gaining attention and, in 1777, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London.
After spending years as his student and assistant, Stuart was encouraged by West to open a studio of his own. When he did so, one of his first commissioned paintings was The Skater, 1782, a portrait of William Grant. When Grant arrived at the studio for a sitting on a brisk, cold morning, he told Stuart that it was a better morning for skating. The sitting was canceled and the two men proceeded to Hyde Park, where they skated on the frozen man-made Serpentine Lake. The event inspired Stuart to paint a full-length portrait of William Grant enjoying the outdoor activity. The tall handsome man, wearing a black suit and hat, is depicted skating tall and erect across the smooth frozen lake. With arms folded across his chest, Grant leans forward slightly above the left foot on which he glides. The gray fur lapels of his jacket and a white shirt, as well as the silver buckles on his shoes, break the severity of his black attire. Also, the beige cuff of one glove can be seen on his right hand, the greater part of which is tucked into the crook of his left elbow. Because it is the lightest value tone in the painting, the vividly white triangle of the shirt draws the viewer’s attention to Grant’s face directly above his high collar. Stuart painted the face in a three-quarters view as Grant looks ahead in the direction he skates, gliding in a curve as indicated by the cut the skate blade left on the surface of the ice. There is a slight smile on William Grant’s face. He appears to be a relaxed and confident skater. Although other figures are seen on the ice in the background and on the shore to the right, Grant skates alone in the foreground. Trees grow along the bank of the lake and London buildings are seen through a haze in the far left background. The ground is bare, however the dove-gray clouds filling the sky indicate the possibility of a coming snowstorm.
When the painting of William Grant was hung in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1782, the novelty of the setting for a portrait gained attention and the skill with which it was painted established Stuart as an important portraitist. Interestingly, Stuart's painting entitled, The Skater, 1782, was mistakenly attributed to Thomas Gainsborough in an exhibition at the Royal Academy nearly a century later, in 1878. Gainsborough was a leading portrait painter in England during the eighteenth century, at the time that Stuart’s career as a portraitist was developing. A highly skilled artist, Stuart's paintings are closely linked with the English portrait tradition of his period.
As Stuart's popularity as a portraitist grew, he was offered more commissions than he could find time and energy to fulfill. He painted quickly and would often work on six different portraits during a day. At the height of his career, he refused many commissions. He would only paint portraits of those whose faces appealed to him. Stuart, in discussing the painting of faces, advised his student Matthew Jouett to first mass in the lights and darks as though seeing the person at a distance or in dim light, thereby capturing the characteristics of the individual’s face.
By 1786, four years after opening his own studio, Stuart was a successful and prosperous artist. At that time, he married Charlotte Coates, a beautiful English girl. Her brother was one of his close friends. Stuart planned to settle down to a quiet married life. However, he had difficulty handling his finances and within two years, deeply in debt, he fled the country with his wife and small family. They settled in Dublin and remained in Ireland for five years.
One of the portraits he painted while in Dublin, entitled John, Lord Fitzgibbon, 1789, is a portrait of the Lord Chancellor, an extremely important man in Ireland. In the painting, Lord Fitzgibbon wears a long white wig and is dressed in a richly adorned costume. His black suit is fairly simple with only a delicate lace collar and a gold watch fob at his waist for decoration. However, over it he wears a floor-length black cape which is heavily encrusted with gold designs on the sleeves and down the front. His figure stands slightly off-center and is balanced by heavy folds of red drapery, both in the background and covering a table in the right lower corner of the painting.
After living in Europe for seventeen years, Stuart returned to America and settled in New York. During the next year he painted the portrait entitled, Mrs. Richard Yates, 1793. The middle-aged woman sits sewing in a red plush chair. Her graceful right hand holds a needle with the thread wrapped around the ends of her tapered fingers. The thimble on her middle finger shines in the soft light. She is stitching the length of fabric on her lap, holding it with her left hand. A moment before, she had taken a stitch and the thread is pulled taut by the little finger of her right hand. Seated almost in profile, Mrs. Yates has turned her head and gazes out toward the viewer. She wears a simple, long-sleeved beige satin gown and a matching bonnet with a soft ruffle that forms a halo around her face. A moment in time has been captured. The painting gives the impression that Mrs. Yates, interrupted briefly at her task, glances up toward a visitor.
Two years later, Stuart traveled to Philadelphia when Congress was in session. He carried with him a letter of introduction to George Washington who, in September of 1795, agreed to sit for Stuart who requested the opportunity to paint his portrait. As a result, Stuart painted Washington from life on three different occasions. Stuart’s first portrait of Washington is known as the Vaughan portrait, for the simple reason that Samuel Vaughan originally owned it. The artist is said to have painted fifteen copies of the Vaughan portrait, which is understandable since Stuart produced many copies of the three portraits he painted when Washington agreed to sit for him.
The second time Stuart painted Washington from life he produced a full-length portrait painted for Lord Lansdowne that was hung in the Lansdowne mansion in Pennsylvania. In The Lansdowne Portrait, 1796, Washington stands rather stiffly with his right arm held nearly straight out to the side. It is an interior scene with elaborate furnishings. The corner of a table, directly below the extended right hand, has a heavy red velvet cover that hangs in deep folds down to the floor. The rich fabric matches the upholstery of the chair behind him on the right side, and heavy drapery is looped between two columns topping the half wall beyond the table to the left of his figure. Washington wears a knee-length black garment with black stockings and black buckle shoes. At his neck, there is a white lace jabot visible between the short, upright points of the dark collar, and white lace edges his cuffs, helping to soften the severity of his garb. His left arm hangs at his side, the hand loosely holding a ceremonial sword just below the hilt. Although his body is in a nearly frontal position, his face is shown in three-quarters view. Not a flattering rendition, his eyes stare straight ahead and his square jaw and straight, firm mouth give his visage a rather stern expression.
The third painting for which Washington posed, was commissioned by Martha Washington. It is owned by the Boston Athenaeum and is known as the Athenaeum portrait. That painting was never finished. The lower third of the portrait and a strip down the left side remain raw canvas. Throughout his lifetime, Stuart kept the original portrait commissioned by Mrs. Washington. After repeated requests that he deliver the commissioned painting, he finally provided a copy, which was received in lieu of the original.
Always in need of funds, Stuart made and sold numerous copies of the portraits of George Washington, for which he asked one hundred dollars apiece. The exact number of copies seems to be uncertain, but one claim is that Stuart produced at least seventy copies based on the three original portraits for which Washington posed. During that time, Stuart had his studio in a stone barn in Germantown on the outskirts of Philadelphia. He moved to Washington, when it became the new capital.
Horace Binney, whose portrait was painted by Stuart around the year 1800, described the artist as an outgoing and gregarious individual. Stuart liked to chat with his sitters. He evidently did so while working on the portrait of Binney, who described the experience. In the course of an hour’s sitting, Stuart had finished the face except for the eyes. When Binney returned for the second sitting, Stuart asked him to look in his direction for a few moments. With a few quick strokes of the brush, Stuart painted in the eyes and the face was finished.
Stuart produced three portraits of a Boston beauty and poetess, Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, the wife of a lawyer. She was a poet, and after seeing one of his portraits of her, perhaps the painting Mrs. Perez Morton c. 1802, she wrote a poem as a tribute to Stuart. Gilbert Stuart, in turn, responded with a poem dedicated to her, as noted in Henry T. Tuckerman’s Book of the Artists, 1867:
Who would not glory in the wreath of praise
Which M . . . n offers in her polished lays?
I feel their cheering influence at my heart,
And more complacent I review my art;
Yet, ah, with Poesy, that gift divine,
Compar’d, how poor, how impotent is mine! ...
Nor wonder, if in tracing charms like thine,
Thought and expression blend a rich design:
T’was heaven itself that blended in thy face,
The lines of Reason with the lines of Grace;
T’was heaven that bade the swift idea rise,
Paint thy soft cheek, and sparkle in thine eyes:
Invention there could justly claim no part,
I only boast the copyist’s humble art. - Stuart -
Stuart's portrait of Mrs. Perez Morton has an almost unfinished quality, except for the face, which was carefully rendered. Her dark eyes gaze directly toward the viewer with a soft and warm expression. Over her dark brown, curly hair, a lacy veil seems to have been put in place a moment before, since both her arms are raised and the hands are concealed in folds of the fabric. Her close-fitting, low-necked, long-sleeved white gown was rendered with loose brush strokes, and there is the hint of a strand of pearls around her neck. The background was painted in freely applied strokes of the brush. Stuart is quoted as saying that it was the face he was interested in painting, not beautiful drapery.
In 1805, Stuart made his permanent home in Boston. His marriage had deteriorated due to his life style and heavy drinking. Despite the fact that he was not constantly with his family, Stuart fathered thirteen children, two of whom were born in England. His oldest son, who died at an early age, had exhibited artistic talent. His daughter, Jane, was also artistic. She described her father’s approach to portraiture. Stuart, according to his daughter, spent the first sitting drawing in the head and features and establishing the general skin tone. During the second and third sittings he applied flesh tones in transparent glazes and captured the expression of the individual.
The warm flesh tones in Gilbert Stuart's portraits and his ability to render a true likeness of each individual made him a highly successful portraitist. He concentrated on the expressiveness of a face and on capturing the inner quality that made each person unique. Having mastered the English style of portraiture as practiced by Thomas Gainsborough and other leading artists in London, Stuart went on to develop his own particular style. A style that included freely applied paint as in the portrait of Mrs. Perez Morton, as well as areas of raw canvas as seen in the Athenaem portrait of George Washington. Revolutionary in technique, Stuart’s painterly style and areas of blank canvas, are a statement of the artist’s right to deviate from the accepted norm in his artistic expression.
Gilbert Stuart suffered a stroke in 1824. Although partially paralyzed, he continued painting until his death in 1828 at age seventy-two. The family, deeply in debt, could not purchase a gravesite and, as a result, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Old South Burial Ground of the Boston Common. Later, a memorial tablet was put in place on Boston Common bearing his name and dates, and the word “Artist.”