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Gilbert Stuart — news, coverage & facts — IJR

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. In 1794, he painted statesman John Jay, from whom he received a letter of introduction to Washington. In 1795, Stuart moved to the Germantown section of Philadelphia, where he opened a studio, and Washington posed for him later that year.

Stuart painted Washington in a series of iconic portraits, each of them leading to a demand for copies and keeping him busy and highly paid for years. 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 so called "Edgehill" portrait to Jefferson. 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).

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:

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.

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 this is an exaggeration to avoid muddiness, Stuart's colors were remarkably fresh. At Stuart's best, he had an extraordinary ability to convey the impression of "luminous, transparent flesh" with color coming from beneath. The face seemed to be embued with life, while the beauty of its coloring conveyed a spiritual quality to contemporaries. 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.

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.

Notable people painted

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.

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

Joshua Reynolds – English artist

Henry Rice – Boston merchant and Massachusetts state legislator

John Tayloe III – Virginia planter, builder of The Octagon House in Washington, DC.

Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney – the cities of Sydney in New South Wales and Sydney, Nova Scotia are named in his honor

John Trumbull – artist during the period of the American Revolutionary War

George Washington – First President of the United States

Martha Washington – First Lady of the United States, wife of George Washington

Benjamin West – American painter

John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare – Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of Ireland

Catherine Brass Yates – Philadelphia socialite

John Bill Ricketts – Equestrian, leader of Ricketts' Circus in Philadelphia

Elisabeth Merry – Wife of Anthony Merry 1805.