| Gilbert Stuart
(1755-1828), American portrait painter, born in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
He grew up in nearby Newport, where he studied painting before going briefly to
Edinburgh in the early 1770s and to London in 1775. In London he became the
pupil of expatriate American painter Benjamin West and was greatly
influenced by the work of English portrait painters Thomas
Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1792, after having
established himself as a fashionable portraitist in London and Dublin, Stuart
decided to return to the United States, where he achieved lasting fame.
Stuart is particularly renowned for his portraits of
American revolutionary hero and statesman George Washington. The
three types of Washington portraits created by Stuart were extensively
reproduced in his studio: the “Vaughan” half-length type (1795), the “Lansdowne”
full-length type (1796), and the “Athenaeum” head type (1796; unfinished
original owned jointly by National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., and
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), which appears on the American $1 bill. Stuart also
executed portraits of American presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and
James Madison, as well as of the British kings George III and George IV. His
oeuvre comprises nearly 1000 portraits. |
