ONE artist, and he easily the first of American painters, did not deny to Browere and his works the merit that was their due. On the contrary, he saw the fidelity and great value of these life masks, and gave practical encouragement to the maker of them by submitting to his process and by giving a certificate of approval. He did this, not so much that his living face might be transmitted to posterity, as to test the truth of the newspaper reports of the suffering and danger experienced by the venerable and venerated Jefferson, and thus by his example encourage others to go and do likewise. The result was the superb head of Gilbert Stuart, herewith reproduced from the original bust, in the Redwood Library, at Newport, Rhode Island. This noble action of Stuart must have been as light out of darkness to Browere.

Upon the completion of the mask, from which this bust was made, Stuart gave to Browere the following emphatic certificate:

The “illiberal misrepresentations” referred to were of course the reported inconveniences that Jefferson had suffered; and praise such as this, from Stuart, is, as approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley, praise indeed.

A few days afterward the Boston “Daily Advertiser” announced: “The portrait bust of Gilbert Stewart, Esq., lately executed by Mr. Browere, will be exhibited by him at the Hubard Gallery, this evening. This exhibition is made by him for the purpose of showing that he can present a perfect likeness, and he will prove at the same time, by the certificate of Mr. Stewart, that the operation is without pain.” Two days later the local press fairly teemed with laudatory notices of Browere’s work. The Boston “American” said: “This bust has been adjudged by all who have examined it and are acquainted with the original to be a striking and perfect resemblance.” The “Commercial Gazette” said: “It is a fine likeness, in truth we think the best we ever saw of any one. We particularly enquired of Mr. Stuart’s family if he suffered by any difficulty of breathing or if the process was in any degree painful, and were assured that there was nothing of an unpleasant or painful nature in it.”

Considering Stuart’s eminence in art, a position fully recognized in his lifetime, and his irascible temper and unyielding character, such action as his toward Browere, not only in submitting to have the mask taken, but in certifying to it and permitting it to be publicly exhibited for the benefit of Browere’s reputation, speaks volumes of the highest authority in support of the workman and his work.

Stuart’s daughter, Jane, who died at Newport, in 1888, at a very advanced age, and was as “impossible” in some respects as was her distinguished father, remembered well the incident of the mask being taken, and testified to its marvellous life-speaking qualities. Having lost all knowledge of its whereabouts, she searched for years in the hope of finding it, since she looked upon it as the next thing to having her father before her. Finally, in the Centennial year, it was discovered

in the possession of Browere’s son, and was purchased by Mr. David King, of Newport, as a present for Miss Stuart. But Miss Stuart felt that her little cottage, so well remembered by many visitors to Newport, was no place for so big a work, and desired that it might be placed in a public gallery, which wish Mr. King complied with, by presenting it to the Redwood Library, at Newport, where it may be seen by all interested in Stuart or in Browere’s life masks. Jane Stuart is the subject of Colonel Wentworth Higginson’s charming paper, “One of Thackeray’s Women,” in his volume of Essays entitled “Concerning All of Us.”

Gilbert Stuart was born in what was called the Narragansett country, on December 3, 1755. The actual place of his birth is now called Hammond Mills, near North Kingston, Rhode Island, about nine miles from Narragansett Pier; and the old-fashioned gambrel-roofed, low-portalled house, in which the future artist first saw light, still stands at the head of Petaquamscott Pond. The snuff-mill set up by Gilbert Stewart, the father of the painter, who had come over from Perth, in Scotland, at the suggestion of a fellow Scotchman, Doctor Thomas Moffatt, to introduce the manufacture of snuff into the colonies, was located, by the race, immediately under the room in which Stuart was born, both being part of the same building, so that Stuart’s excuse for taking snuff, that he was born in a snuff-mill, is literally true.

When four months old, the third and youngest child of the snuff-grinder and his beautiful wife, Elizabeth Anthony, was carried, on Palm Sunday, to the Episcopal church and baptized “Gilbert Stewart.” The significance of this record is found in the orthography of the surname and in the limitation of the baptismal name. Stuart’s name will be found in print quite frequently as “Gilbert Charles Stuart,” and I have seen it as “Charles Gilbert Stuart”; and the Jacobin leaning of his Scotch sire, is commonly supported by the naming of the child for the last of the Royal Stuarts, the romantic Prince Charlie. This pretty legend, built to support unreliable tradition, is blown to the winds by the prosaic church record, which shows that the artist’s orthography was an assumption, and his name simply Gilbert Stewart. That this plebeian spelling of the royal name, was not an error or accident of the scribe who made it, is proved by signatures of the snuff-grinder which have come down to us.

Stuart’s parents early removed to Newport, where the son had the advantage of tuition in English and Latin, from the assistant minister of venerable Trinity parish; but in his boyhood Stuart seems to have shown none of those dominant characteristics which later were so strongly developed both in the artist and in the man, unless it may be the predilection for pranks and practical jokes that early manifested itself.

The earliest picture that can be recognized as from the brush of Gilbert Stuart, is a pair of Spanish dogs belonging to the famous Dr. William Hunter, of Newport, which Stuart is said to have painted when in his fourteenth year; and what are claimed to be his first portraits, those of Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, have been so nearly destroyed by “restoration,” that nothing of the original work remains to show any merit the pictures may have possessed.

Stuart’s first instruction in art was received from Cosmo Alexander, a Scotchman, who passed a few years in the colonies painting a number of interesting portraits in the affected, perfunctory manner of the period. Of Alexander nothing was known until recent investigations by the writer discovered him to be a great-grandson of George Jamesone, whom Walpole calls “the Vandyke of Scotland.” Alexander took Stuart, then in his eighteenth year, back with him to Scotland, to acquire a greater knowledge of art than was possible in the colonies at that time; and Stuart is claimed to have been at this period a student at the University of Glasgow. But this tradition, like that previously mentioned, is shattered, as tradition almost always is shattered, by the cold, unimaginative record, which fails to show his name on the matriculation register.

Alexander died not long after reaching Edinburgh, and Stuart was left, according to his biographers, in the care of Alexander’s friend, “Sir George Chambers,” who “quickly followed Alexander to the grave,” leaving Stuart without protection. But this story is manifestly without foundation, as there was no “Sir George Chambers” at the period considered. There was, however, a Scotch painter of some repute, Sir George Chalmers, of Cults, who had married either a sister or a daughter of Cosmo Alexander; and this Sir George Chalmers is doubtless the person intended, although he lived on until 1791, so that it could not have been his demise that threw Stuart upon his own resources, which, being few, necessitated his working his way home, on a collier, after a few months’ absence.

Stuart returned to America from Scotland at a period of intense excitement. The Boston Port bill had just been received, assuring what the Stamp Act had initiated, and the tories and the patriots were being marshalled according to their particular bias. It was not a time for the peaceful arts. It was the time for action and for town meetings. Before the echoes of Lexington and Concord had died away, “Gilbert Stewart the snuff-grinder” hied himself away to Nova Scotia, leaving his wife and family behind. At this epoch Gilbert Stuart, the future painter, was in his twentieth year, and apparently had inherited from his father sentiments of loyalty to the Crown, so that instead of going forth to battle for his native land, as many no older than he did, he embarked for England, the day before the action at Bunker Hill, with the ostensible object of seeking the Mecca of all of our early artists, the studio of Benjamin West.

Once in London, Stuart’s object to seek instruction in painting from West, seems to have weakened, and he remained in the great metropolis nearly two years before he knocked at the Newman-street door of the kindly Pennsylvanian. These months were occupied chiefly with a sister art in which Stuart was most proficient. He loved music more than he loved painting—a taste that never forsook him. He played upon several instruments, but his favorites were the organ and the flute; indeed the story has come down that his last night in Newport, before sailing, was spent in playing the flute under the window of one of its fair denizens.

This knowledge of music stood Stuart in good stead when an unknown youth in an unknown land. A few days after his arrival in London, hungry and penniless, he passed the open door of a church, through which there came to his ear the strains of a feebly played organ. He ventured in and found the vestry sitting in judgment upon several applicants for the position of organist. Receiving permission to enter the competition, he was selected for the position at a salary of thirty pounds, after having satisfied the officials of his character, by reference to Mr. William Grant, whose whole-length portrait Stuart afterward painted.

Having some kind of subsistence assured him by the position of organist he thus secured, Stuart began that desultory dallying with art which later often left him without a dry crust for his daily bread. While his work was always serious, his temperament never was, and he seems to have played cruel jokes upon himself, as carelessly as he did upon others. For two years his career is almost lost to art; only once in a while did he gather himself together to work at his painting. He had, however, to a marked degree, that odd resource of genius which enabled him to work best and catch up with lost time when under the spur of necessity. In later days, with sitters besieging his door, he would turn them away, one by one, until the larder was empty and there was not a penny left in the purse; then he would go to work and in an incredibly short time produce one of his masterpieces.

Such was the character, in outline, of the man who went to London to study under West, and, after reaching the metropolis, let two years slip by him without seeking his chosen master. Finally he went to the famous American and was received as a pupil and as a member of the painter’s family, in true apprentice style. Just what Stuart learned from West it is difficult to imagine;—unless it was how not to paint. For, without desiring or meaning to join in the hue and cry of to-day against the art of West, but on the contrary, protesting against the clamor which fails to consider the conditions that existed in his time and therefore fails to do him the justice that is his due, there is surely nothing in the work of the one to suggest anything in the work of the other.

For five long and doubtless weary years Stuart plodded under the guidance of his gentle master until, tired of doing some of the most important parts of West’s royal commissions, for which his remuneration was probably only his keep and tuition, without even the chance of glory, he broke away and opened a studio for himself in New Burlington Street. If Stuart did gain little in art from West, he gained much of the invaluable benefit of familiar intercourse with persons of the first distinction, who were frequenters of the studio of the King’s painter. This was of great advantage to the young artist when he set up his own easel, and many of these men became his early sitters.

Stuart, while domiciled with West, drew in the schools of the Royal Academy, attended the lectures of the distinguished William Cruikshank on anatomy, and listened to the discourses delivered by Sir Joshua Reynolds on painting. Later on he painted the portraits of each of these celebrated men, and did enough individual work to indicate the quality of the artistic stuff that was in him, awaiting an opportunity to manifest itself. In 1777, the year Stuart went to West, he made his first exhibition at the Royal Academy. His one contribution is entered in the catalogue of that year merely as “A Portrait.” It is not improbable that this was a portrait of his fellow countryman and early friend, Benjamin Waterhouse, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who preceded Stuart to London only a short time, and who seems to have remained the artist’s chum during their sojourn in the English capital. A portrait of Doctor Waterhouse, by Stuart, was given by the Doctor’s widow, to the Redwood library, at Newport, together with Stuart’s self-portrait, wearing a large hat, and dated on the back, 1778. These two portraits are evidently of a contemporaneous period.

In 1779 Stuart exhibited, at the Royal Academy, three pictures: “A Young Gentleman,” “A Little Girl,” and “A Head.” In 1781 he showed “A Portrait from Recollection since Death,” and in 1782 made his last exhibition there, sending a “Portrait of an Artist,” and “A Portrait of a Gentleman Skating.” This last picture, although painted so early in his career, has been considered Stuart’s chef-d’oeuvre. It is a whole-length portrait of Mr. William Grant, of Congalton, skating in St. James Park. Mr. Grant was the early friend who bore testimony to Stuart’s character, whereby Stuart gained the organist’s position soon after his arrival in London; and the story has come down that Mr. Grant, desiring to help Stuart, determined to sit for his portrait, and went to Stuart’s room for a sitting. The day was crisp and cold, and the conversation, not unnaturally, turned upon skating, a sport much enjoyed by both painter and sitter, each being rarely skilful at it. Finally paints and brushes were put away, and the two friends started forth to skate. Stuart was so struck with the beauty and rhythm of his companion’s motion that he determined to essay a picture of him thus engaged. The original canvas was abandoned and a new one begun, showing Mr. Grant not merely upon skates, but actually skating; and the latent force of the graceful undulating motion has been rendered with a skill and ability that at once put Stuart in the front rank of the great portrait-painters of his day.

The remarkable merit of this picture and the wilful unreasonableness of painters in not signing their works, were curiously shown at the exhibition of “Pictures by the Old Masters,” held at Burlington House, in January of 1878. In the printed catalogue of the collection this picture was attributed to Gainsborough, and attracted and received marked attention. A writer in the “Saturday Review,” speaking of the exhibition, remarks: “Turning to the English school, we may observe a most striking portrait in number 128, in Gallery III. This is set down as ‘Portrait of W. Grant, Esq., of Congalton, skating in St. James Park. Thomas Gainsborough, R. A. (?)’ The query is certainly pertinent, for, while it is difficult to believe that we do not recognize Gainsborough’s hand in the graceful and silvery look of the landscape in the background, it is not easy to reconcile the flesh tones of the portrait itself with any preconceived notion of Gainsborough’s workmanship. The face has a peculiar firmness and decision in drawing, which reminds one rather of Raeburn than of Gainsborough, though we do not mean by this to suggest in any way that Gainsborough wanted decision in either painting or drawing when he chose to exercise it.”

The discussion as to the authorship of this picture waxed warm, the champions of Raeburn, of Romney, and of Shee, contending with those of Gainsborough for the prize, which contention was only set at rest by a grandson of the subject coming out with a card that the picture was by “the great portrait-painter of America, Gilbert Stuart.” And to Stuart it did justly belong.

With the success of this portrait of Mr. Grant, Stuart was launched upon the sea of prosperity, and to himself alone, and not to want of patronage or lack of opportunity, is due his failure to provide against old age or a rainy day. For a while he lived like a lord, in reckless extravagance. Money rolled in upon him, and he spent it lavishly, without a thought for the morrow. His rooms were thronged with sitters, and he received prices for his work second only to those of Reynolds and of Gainsborough. He was on the best footing with his brethren of the brush, and with Gainsborough, his senior by more than a quarter of a century, he painted a whole-length portrait of Henry, Earl of Carnarvon, in his robes, which has been engraved in mezzotinto by William Ward, with the names of the two painters inscribed upon the plate. This alone shows the estimation in which Stuart was held by his contemporaries, and it would be most interesting to know which parts were the work of Stuart and which were due to his famous collaborator.

About this period Boydell was in the midst of the publication of his great Shakespeare gallery, to which the first artists of the day contributed, and Stuart was commissioned by the Alderman, to paint, for the gallery, portraits of the leading painters and engravers who were engaged upon the work. Thus, for Boydell, he painted the superb half-length portraits of his master West, and of the engravers Woollett and Hall, now in the National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin’s Place, London. He painted, also for Boydell, his own portrait, and portraits of Reynolds, Copley, Gainsborough, Ozias Humphrey, Earlom, Facius, Heath, William Sharp, Boydell himself, and several others. Stuart was an intimate friend of John Philip Kemble, and painted his portrait several times; one picture is in the National Portrait Gallery, and another, as Richard III., which has been engraved by Keating, did belong to Sir Henry Halford.

Other prominent sitters to Stuart in London were Hugh, Duke of Northumberland, the Lord Percy of the Battle of Bunker Hill; Admiral Sir John Jervis, afterward Earl St. Vincent; Isaac BarrÉ; Dr. Fothergill, and the Dukes of Manchester and of Leinster. From these names alone it can be seen that Stuart was in touch with persons of the highest consideration, and they were not only his patrons, but his friends. He kept open house, dispensing a princely hospitality. The story has been handed down that he led off with a dinner of forty-two, composed of the choice spirits of the metropolis. He was so charming as a host, and had gathered together such delightful guests, that it was suggested the same party should meet frequently, which proposition Stuart accepted, by arranging that six of them should dine with him each day of the week, without special invitation, the six first arriving to be the guests of the day, until the entire forty-two had again warmed their legs under his mahogany. Such prodigality as this, for a young artist, shows what Stuart’s temperament was, and points as surely to the pauper’s grave as though it was there yawning open before him.

Stuart was five feet ten inches in height, with fine physique, brown hair, a ruddy complexion, and strongly marked features. He dressed with elegance, which was possible at that period, and notwithstanding his biting sarcasm, keen wit, and searching eye, was a great favorite with the fair sex. In his thirty-first year he selected Miss Charlotte Coates, the daughter of a Berkshire physician, for his partner through life, and on May 10, 1786, they were married.

Stuart remained in London until 1788, when he was induced to visit Ireland and open a studio in Dublin. Here he kept up the same style of living he had indulged in before he left London and was in high favor with the Irish, painting some of his most elaborate portraits at this time; but, although fully employed and receiving the highest prices for his pictures, he was always without money. So poor was he, indeed, that when he returned to this country, in 1792, he had not the means to pay for his passage and engaged to paint the portrait of the owner of the ship as its equivalent. He landed in New York towards the close of the year; and although the tradition has been handed down that the cause of his returning to America, was his desire to paint the portrait of Washington, it seems, considering that he waited two years before visiting Philadelphia for the purpose, that the remark of Sir Thomas Lawrence may not have been without foundation. The latter, upon hearing this reason assigned, is related by Leslie to have said: “I knew Stuart well and I believe the real cause of his leaving England was his having become tired of the inside of our prisons.” Whatever the real cause was that brought the artist home, we may congratulate ourselves that he came to live among us at the period that he did, for he was then in the fulness of his powers, and the pictures that he painted between this time and his removal to Boston, in 1805, are the finest productions of his brush on this side of the water.

Gilbert Stuart went to reside in Philadelphia about New Year, 1795. There he painted his famous life portraits of Washington, three in number, but I have written so often and so much on this subject that I shall content myself with this bare mention.[5] There also he painted the portraits of the famous men and of the beautiful women that have helped most to place his name so high up on the pillar of fame. That Stuart was a master in the art of portrait-painting it needs no argument to prove; his works are the only evidence needed, and they establish it beyond appeal. In his portraits the men and women of the past live again. Each individual is here, and it was Stuart’s ability to portray the individual that was his greatest power. Each face looks at you and fain would speak, while the brilliant and animated coloring makes one forgetful of the past. The “EncyclopÆdia Britannica,” a forum beyond dispute, says: “Stuart was pre-eminent as a colourist, and his place, judged by the highest canons in art, is unquestionably among the few recognized masters of portraiture.”

Stuart had two distinct artistic periods. His English work shows plainly the influence of his English contemporaries, and might easily be mistaken, as it has been, for the best work of Romney or of Gainsborough. But his American work, almost the very first he did after his return to his native soil, proclaims aloud the virility and robustness of his independence. The rich, juicy coloring so marked in his fine portraits painted here, replaces the tender pearly grays so predominant in his pictures painted there. The delicate precision of his early brush gives way to the masterful freedom of his later one. His English portraits might have been limned by Romney or by Gainsborough, but his American ones could have been painted only by Gilbert Stuart. This greatest of American painters died in Boston, July 27, 1828, and was interred in an unmarked grave in the Potter’s Field.