Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Charles Stuart

(1755-1828)

Gilbert Stuart was one of the first native-born American painters to achieve widespread fame and recognition as a portraitist of the young republic. Stuart is certainly best known for his many depictions of George Washington. Yet in his long and prolific career he also painted nearly all the influential persons of his day-government and military leaders, merchants, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and European aristocrats-and set the standard for several generations of American portraitists.

Stuart was born in a chamber above his father's snuff mill in North Kingston County, Rhode Island. In 1761 his family moved to nearby Newport, where he began studying with Cosmo Alexander, a visiting Scottish artist, in 1769. Stuart accompanied his teacher to Edinburgh in 1771, but Alexander died unexpectedly soon after their arrival. Alone and ill-prepared to support himself by painting, Stuart went home. In spring 1775 he returned to London and spent several years in the workshop of Benjamin West. After showing his full-length portrait of William Grant of Congalton, The Skater (1782; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), at the Royal Academy, he was catapulted to fame. He opened his own portrait studio and soon was busily fulfilling portrait commissions for London society. In 1787 he was heralded by the London press as the van Dyck of his time, a notable achievement considering the great talents and reputations of his British competitors Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, and George Romney.

Stuart seldom lacked commissions, but his notorious extravagance and ineptitude in business matters kept him constantly in debt and on the run. He left London in 1787 for Dublin, then moved to New York five years later. In the States, Stuart was immediately taken up by the social, political, and mercantile aristocracy. The success of his pictures of George Washington established him as the leading portraitist in America. He was again constantly employed-in New York from 1787 to 1788, in Philadelphia from 1794 to 1803, in Washington from 1803 to 1805, and in Boston, where he settled in 1805.

Stuart's popularity was established early in his career through his successful combination of rich painterly technique and realistic and insightful likenesses. His early portraits were based on a thorough knowledge of British portraiture, though as his career progressed, he increasingly preferred his own standard composition: a three-quarter profile bust or half-length portrait, often oval in format and featuring only a simple monochromatic background.

Jared Sparks, ca.1827-28

Oil on canvas, 27 ? x 22 1/8 in. (69.2 x 56.2 cm)

Stephen B. Lawrence and Charles F. Smith Funds (1955.6)

The New Britain portrait of Jared Sparks (1789-1866) (1) is one of several canvases begun about 1827-28 that remained unfinished at Stuart's death. Although only lightly sketched in, Sparks's features, which emerge from a gray-brown background, are well delineated, giving the sitter the air of an energetic, affable, intelligent, and remarkably handsome young man. Stuart may have required perhaps only one or two more sittings with Sparks in order to finish the portrait.

When Stuart began the painting in 1827, historian Jared Sparks was about to go on a research trip to Europe to gather material for the project that would become his greatest work-the publication of the writings of George Washington. The son of a Connecticut farmer, Sparks began his career as a minister in Baltimore. In 1823 he resigned to become the owner and editor of the influential Boston publication the North American Review. In 1838 he turned down the Whig nomination for Congress in favor of a position as the first professor of history at Harvard University. He later served as its president. Sparks became one of the nation's first and foremost historians. His works on the Revolutionary period include The Life of Gouverneur Morris, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, The Library of American Biography, and The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, in addition to his pioneering twelve-volume series The Writings of George Washington. (2)

MAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

William Dunlap, “A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States,” 2 vols. (New York: George P. Scott, 1834), vol. 1, pp. 161-222; George C. Mason, “The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart,” (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879); Lawrence Park, “Gilbert Stuart, An Illustrated Descriptive List of His Works” (New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1926); Charles Merrill Mount, “Gilbert Stuart, A Biography” (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964); “Gilbert Stuart: Portraitist of the Young Republic,” 1755-1828, exhib. cat. (Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1967); Richard McLanathan, Gilbert Stuart (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986).

On Sparks, see Herbert Baxter Adams, “The Life and Writing of Jared Sparks” (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1893).

Notes:

On Sparks, see Herbert Baxter Adams, The Life and Writing of Jared Sparks, (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1893).