Gilbert Stuart

Fülszöveg

He nails the face to the canvas.
Benjamin West, 1784
an American artist of transcendent powers, who has the rare and happy talent of (klineating on his exquisite canvas all the emotions of the heart and all the operations
of the mind. The Portfolio,'WiLshington, 1803
It is the only likeness that has ever been taken of me. My other pictures are quite as like
anyone else as me. „ . t- - r. . o
Pnncessjerome Bonaparte, c. 1803
Speaking generally, no penance is like having one's picture done. But I should like
to sit to Stuart .for he lets me do just what I please, and keeps me constantly amused
by his conversation. t ¦ « 1 n
John Adams, 1825
And this portrait ofJohn Adams is a remarkable work, for a faithful representation of the extreme age of the subject would have been painful in inferior hands. But Stuart caught a glimpse of the living spirit shining through the feeble and decrepit body. He saw the old man at one of those happy moments when the intelligence lights... Tovább

Fülszöveg

He nails the face to the canvas.
Benjamin West, 1784
an American artist of transcendent powers, who has the rare and happy talent of (klineating on his exquisite canvas all the emotions of the heart and all the operations
of the mind. The Portfolio,'WiLshington, 1803
It is the only likeness that has ever been taken of me. My other pictures are quite as like
anyone else as me. „ . t- - r. . o
Pnncessjerome Bonaparte, c. 1803
Speaking generally, no penance is like having one's picture done. But I should like
to sit to Stuart .for he lets me do just what I please, and keeps me constantly amused
by his conversation. t ¦ « 1 n
John Adams, 1825
And this portrait ofJohn Adams is a remarkable work, for a faithful representation of the extreme age of the subject would have been painful in inferior hands. But Stuart caught a glimpse of the living spirit shining through the feeble and decrepit body. He saw the old man at one of those happy moments when the intelligence lights up the wasted envelope, and what he saw he fixed upon the canvas.
Josiah Quincy, 1825
THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN ART
THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN ART
GILBERT STUART
Father of Amencan Portraiture
Every American knows the dignified bust portrait of George Washington that hangs in so many schoolrooms. The painter, Gilbert Stuart, was in his day the most famous, sought-after, celebrated, and accomplished portraidst of the infant Republic. This lively biography, the first in more than twenty years, and the only one ever to contain as many as fifty reproducuons of Stuart's paintings in color, brings the ardst to life in dramatic fashion.
Born in 1755 in North Kingston County, Rhode Island, Stuart spent many of his formative years in London (where he knew the great expatriate American painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley) and Dublin. He honed his skills portraying English and Irish nobility and could easily have spent his enure career in Britain, so successful did he become. But Stuart loved to live extravagantly. Though his fees rose steadily and patrons clamored for his deft, brilliant works, mounung debts forced the painter to move on.
Fortunately for American history, Stuart returned to these shores and pursued a new and successful career in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, where he created memorable portraits of Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James and Dolley Madison, John Adams, Paul Revere, and others—in effect a gallery of the founding families of the nation. His pictures not only caught superb likenesses and probed deeply into the characters of his sitters—male and female alike—but also were so wonderfully painted that they could be enjoyed for Stuart's virtuosity alone. The familiar, unfinished bust portrait and several monumental full-length portraits of George Washington were the culminauon of his career.
In addition to fifty-one portraits in color, another fifty are reproduced in black and white, along with contemporary engravings of places important in the artist's life.
Author Richard McLanathan, formerly curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has also served as director of the Munson-Williams-Proc-tor Institute in Utica, New York, and the American Association of Museums. A consultant to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and member of the New York State Council on the Arts, Dr. McLanathan is author of numerous articles and books, the most recent of which is Wm-ld Art in American Museums.
Approximately 12oilljistraliom, including 51 plates in full color
THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN ART
A newly inaugurated series of specially commissioned biographies of major American artists and surveys of art movements published in association with the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C, Vissza