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Jane Stuart

American, 1812 - 1888

Birth-PlaceBoston, MA

Death-PlaceNewport, RI

BiographyJane Stuart was the daughter of the Federal era portraitist Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). Although she was born into an artistic family, this advantage did not guarantee her artistic success since her father had her grind "his" paints and fill in "his" backgrounds instead of instructing her in drawing or painting. Unfortunately, she spent most of her career making ends meet by painting copies of her father's celebrated images of George Washington and fulfilling other portrait commissions. At the time, portraiture was considered the most appropriate art form for women artists to pursue since it was considered of relatively low status compared to other genres.

EXTENDED BIO
Jane Stuart (1812-1888) was an American painter. Jane Stuart was born in 1812 in Boston, Massachusetts.[1][2][3][4] She was the daughter of renowned painter Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) After her father's death in 1828, she opened a studio in Boston and started selling paintings, especially replicas of her father's portrait of President George Washington (1732–1799).[3][4][6] In 1834, she painted Scene from a Novel or a Subject from Literature, now owned by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.[2] Her painting A Portrait of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry belonged to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island until it was sold by Christie's in 1999.[7] From 1827 to 1870, her work was often exhibited at the Boston Athenæum as well as at the National Academy Museum and School in New York City.[3]

In the 1850s, her studio burned and she moved to her family home in Newport, Rhode Island.[3] By 1886, she moved to 86 Mill Street in Newport.[1] During that time, she continued to paint and occasionally wrote for Scribner's Monthly.[8] Though she was financially strapped, she kept up appearances during the Gilded Age by selling her father's paintings or her reproductions of them.[1]

REFERENCES
Newport Historical Society
^ Jump up to: a b c Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Dale T. Johnson, American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney Collection, New York, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990, p. 207 [1]
^ Jump up to: a b c d Paula E. Calvin, Deborah A. Deacon, American Women Artists in Wartime, 1776-2010, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2011, pp. 44-46 [2]
Jump up ^ Patricia Dunlavy Valenti, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: 1809-1847, Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2004, p. 24 [3]
^ Jump up to: a b Ann Lee Morgan, The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 413 [4]
Jump up ^ Christie's: A Portrait of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
Jump up ^ James Thomas Flexner, America's Old Masters, Mineola, New York: Courier Dover Publications, 1967, p. 351 [5]
Jump up ^ Google Books

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