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Gilbert Stuart
1755-1828
Gilbert Stuart was born in North Kingston, R.I., on Dec. 3, 1755. At the age of 13 or 14 he studied art with the Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander in Newport. With Alexander he made a tour of the South and a journey to Edinburgh, where Alexander died in 1772. For about a year Stuart remained, poverty-stricken, in Scotland, but finally, working as a sailor, he managed to get back to America. There he executed a few portraits in a hard limner fashion. With the Revolutionary War threatening, his family, who had Tory sympathies, fled to Nova Scotia, and Stuart sailed for London, where he remained from 1775 to 1787. For the first 4 or 5 years, Stuart served as the first assistant of American expatriate painter Benjamin West, who had rescued him from poverty. From the first, Stuart showed an interest only in portraiture and had no desire to go into the branch of history painting West practiced. After his apprenticeship, Stuart became London's leading portrait painter, next to Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, whose style he emulated, as in a rare full-length portrait of William Grant of Congalton as The Skater (ca. 1782). For a while Stuart lived in splendor, but being a bad businessman and a profligate spender, he was in constant debt. He lived in Ireland from 1787 to 1792 and then returned to America to make a fortune,
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Painting ID:: 74296
John Adams
National Museum of American Art
1826
76.2 cm x 53.6 cm
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Painting ID:: 74304
Thomas Jefferson
National Gallery of Art, Washington
c. 1821
66 cm x 54.5 cm
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Painting ID:: 74654
Portrait of Connecticut politician and governor Oliver Wolcott
English: Portrait of Connecticut politician and governor Oliver Wolcott, Jr., by the American artist Gilbert Stuart. Oil on canvas. 27 1/2 in. x 23 1/4 in. Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Date circa 1820
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Painting ID:: 74716
William Woollett
English: "William Woollett," oil on canvas, by the American artist Gilbert Stuart. 35.5 in. x 27.75 in. Courtesy of the Tate Britain. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum.
Date 1783
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Painting ID:: 74717
Children of the Second Duke of Northumberland
English: "The Children of the Second Duke of Northumberland," oil on canvas, by the American artist Gilbert Stuart. Private collection. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum.
Date 1787
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Gilbert Stuart
1755-1828
Gilbert Stuart was born in North Kingston, R.I., on Dec. 3, 1755. At the age of 13 or 14 he studied art with the Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander in Newport. With Alexander he made a tour of the South and a journey to Edinburgh, where Alexander died in 1772. For about a year Stuart remained, poverty-stricken, in Scotland, but finally, working as a sailor, he managed to get back to America. There he executed a few portraits in a hard limner fashion. With the Revolutionary War threatening, his family, who had Tory sympathies, fled to Nova Scotia, and Stuart sailed for London, where he remained from 1775 to 1787. For the first 4 or 5 years, Stuart served as the first assistant of American expatriate painter Benjamin West, who had rescued him from poverty. From the first, Stuart showed an interest only in portraiture and had no desire to go into the branch of history painting West practiced. After his apprenticeship, Stuart became London's leading portrait painter, next to Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, whose style he emulated, as in a rare full-length portrait of William Grant of Congalton as The Skater (ca. 1782). For a while Stuart lived in splendor, but being a bad businessman and a profligate spender, he was in constant debt. He lived in Ireland from 1787 to 1792 and then returned to America to make a fortune,
. Related Artists to Gilbert Stuart: | Pierre-edouard Frere | Constantin Hansen | MAINO, Fray Juan Bautista | JOUVENET, Jean-Baptiste | Edmund Blair Leighton |
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