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Gilbert Stuart
1755 - 1828
Gilbert Charles Stuart (born Stewart) was an American portrait painter. Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists. His best known work, "George Washington", was completed the 1796. The image of George Washington featured in the painting has appeared on the United States One-Dollar Bill for over a century.
Gilbert Stuart was born in Saunderstown, Rhode Island in 1755. He was the third son of Gilbert Stewart, a Scottish immigrant, and Elizabeth Anthony Stewart. Stuart's father worked in the first colonial Snuff Mill in America, which was located in the basement of the family homestead.
Stuart first began to show great promise as a painter. He was tutored by Cosmo Alexander, a Scottish painter. Under the guidance of Alexander, Stuart painted the famous portrait "Dr. Hunter's Spaniels", when he was 12-years-old. His prospects as a portraitist were jeopardized by the onset of the American Revolution and its social disruptions. Following the example set by John Singleton Copley, Stuart departed for England in 1775. There he became the pupil of the expatriate American painter Benjamin West and was much influenced by the work of the English portrait painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The relationship was a beneficial one. With them Stuart was exhibiting at the Royal Academy as early as 1777.
In 1792, after establishing himself as a fashionable portrait painter in London and Dublin, Stuart returned to the U.S. Stuart returned to the United States in 1793. In Philadelphia, he opened a studio and gained not only a foothold in the art world, but lasting fame with pictures of many important Americans of the day.
His portraits, which number nearly 1000, brought him lasting fame, particularly the three he did of George Washington. His two most familiar portraits of Washington, of which he made over 100 copies, are the so-called Vaughan half-length type (1795, Metropolitan Museum, New York City) and the so-called "Athenaeum" portrayal (unfinished; 1796, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Stuart also did portraits of Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and of the British kings George III and George IV.
Throughout his career, Gilbert Stuart produced portraits of over 1,000 people, including the first six Presidents of the United States. His work can be found today at art museums across the United States and the United Kingdom.
In 1824 he suffered a stroke, which left him partially paralyzed. Nevertheless, Stuart continued to paint for two years until his death in Boston at the age of 72.
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