Washington's Portrait Painter:
GILBERT STUART, Artist
By FREDERICK A. SWEET
Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, The Art Institute of Chicago
Stuart painted this portrait in 1797, but Washington is not known
to have sat for it. It hangs in New York Public Library.
An 18th-century acquaintance of Gilbert
Stuart gave this earthy description of
the artist: "He has the appearance of a
man who is attached to drinking, as his
face is bloated and red. But he possesses
a good deal of humor and related several
interesting anecdotes about some of his fel
low artists." He added, "As a portrait
painter, Stuart is not excelled, I believe, by
any man living."
These two observations tell us much
about the artist who painted our most fa
mous portraits of George Washington. Gil
bert Stuart was indeed one of the great
est American artists, leaving us a rich
legacy of likenesses of famous men of the
late 18th and early 19th century. Yet Stu
art was also a practical man, caught up in
the sometimes unpleasant business of mak
ing a living, and his high artistic ideals
were often contrasted by some of the meth
ods he used, including subterfuge.
Although he portrayed many of the great
men of the early Republic, Stuart's pop
ular fame rests to a great extent on his
portraits of George Washington, and his
relations with our first President paint an
adequate portrait of Gilbert Stuart him
self the artist and the "businessman."
To begin with, Stuart painted more than
100 portraits of Washington. The question
is how many of these portraits did our
busy first President actually pose-for? Only
five, I'm afraid. And for all practical pur
poses, three of these are the same picture.
Where, then, did all the other portraits
come from? Stuart simply made numerous
copies. And he sold them readily.
It was not unusual for an artist in those
days to copy his own work or, for that
matter, for another artist to plagiarize it
There were no copyright laws nor royal
ties on resales. An artist was paid only
once, and his only chance for extra profit
was to make extra copies. Stuart's methods,
however, were sometimes highly "original."
The first Washington pose, commonly
referred to as the Vaughn type (the origi
nal was ordered by a man named Vaughn) ,
shows the right side of Washington's face
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