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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-centuhy 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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and is probably the most widely distributed of the three
distinct poses. Stuart himself, however, disliked it and said
that he had destroyed it.
Most experts dispute this, believing that Stuart merely
used this as a subterfuge to get Washington to pose again.
The original is believed to be in the National Gallery in
Washington, and many variations of the Vaughn type,
painted by Stuart himself, are known to exist. Two should
be familiar to every American. One is reproduced on the
dollar bill and another on the two-cent stamp.
The second pose, or Lansdowne type (also named for the
first owner), involves three originals simply because Stu
art painted all three of them at once. He set up three easels
and alternately worked on each, mass-production style.
The third pose, called the Athenaeum type, is probably
Stuai't's best picture of Washington, although it brought
him into direct conflict with his subject. Washington him
self ordered this portrait for his wife Martha. Stuart, how
ever, liked it so well that he kept it. We have several ver- '
sions of what happened. Stuart's daughter wrote the most
charitable account.
She said that Washington called at the Stuart home to
pick up the picture, but when Stuart explained that it was
invaluable to him in making extra copies which he could sell,
Washington conceded that Stuart could keep it "at your
pleasure, if it be of any consequence to you, sir."
A more salty version was offered by a visitor to Mount
Vernon who heard the picture referred to rather angrily.
It seems that both Washington and Mrs. Washington each
had made several visits to Stuart's home, hoping to have the
picture delivered. Each time Stuart put them off, claiming
that it wasn't ready. On the final visit, the President be
came so ruffled he stormed out, rasping, "Very well, sir,
deliver it when you will, for I will not call again."
Both versions have an element of truth. The fact is that
Stuart was quite right when he said the painting was not
finished it still isn't! But it is unfinished because Stuart
did not wish it to be. The portrait was a good one, so good
that Stuart wanted it handy to make copies. So he left the
foreground and background blank as an excuse, although
Washington's visage was completed admirably. Before he
was through with it, Stuart made more than 70 copies of
this version. The original, which now hangs in the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston, is still the best of the group.
Despite his mild perhaps excusable deceptions,
Stuart's worth as an artist should not be minimized. As one
observer commented, "Stuart's portraits of Washington are
so implanted in our minds that if Washington were to return
to earth today and stand beside one of them and not resem
ble it, he would be declared an impostor."
One of three Lansdowne
portraits Washington ac
tually posed for now
hangs in Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine
Arts in Philadelphia.
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