Americas Collection
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart, Mrs. Stephen Peabody, 1809, oil on wood panel, 26 _ x 21 _ inches. Collection of the ASU Art Museum, gift of Oliver B. James 1953.132.000.
About the Artist
“Mr. Stewart was very polite, appeared sensible, and entertaining; but I did not say a word to him about the price, as you desired me not to....I felt so disagreeably to set down and be looked at, and to look up in a stranger’s face, that I fear little of my true lineaments will be seen.” Mrs. Stephen Peabody, in a letter to her son concerning her portrait. (2)
“In a word, Gilbert Stuart was, in its widest sense, a philosopher in his art; he thoroughly understood its principles, as his work bears witness, whether as to the harmony of colors, or of lines, or of light and shadow, showing that exquisite sense of a whole, which only a man of genius can realize and embody.” Washington Allston, Stuart’s obituary, Boston Daily Advertiser (3)
“Preserve as far as practicable the round, blunt stroke in preference
to the winding, flirting, whisping manner....Never be sparing of color, load
your pictures, but keep your colors as separate as you can. No blending, ‘tis
destructive of clear and beautiful effect. It takes [away from] the transparency
and liquidity of coloring, and renders the flesh the consistency of buckskin.”Gilbert
Stuart (4)
Gilbert Stuart was born a British subject and died an American. He
was a successful and popular painter in London. He went from an impoverished
colonial to a student of the fashionable painter Benjamin West to a
portraitist who commanded prices on the level of West himself. Enjoying a
high style of life, and an avid snuff taker, he had to flee London from his
creditors, first to Ireland and then to the newly formed United States. Best
known for his portrait of George Washington, Stuart was considered one of
the best painters of the era and, after dying in poverty in 1828 in Boston,
was eulogized as a painter of the Republic.
Paintings from this period are associated with the past, naturally,
and viewers look at them as relics, old fossils that are quaint compared to
the images of the modern age. The portrait of Mrs. Peabody is a case in point.
Here is an old lady, painted in hues of brown, age cloaked in age. A look
at the painter and the methods and reasons by which he painted allows the
viewer to enter into the spirit of the age; it is hoped that it takes the
painting out of the crypt of history and brings it to life.
Stuart was a colorful man. Portrait painting was the manner in which
he supported himself but he did not suffer fools, or clients, gladly. “What
damned business is this of a portrait-painter! You bring him a potato and
expect he will paint a peach,” he said after being queried by a sitter’s husband
on why the rendering was not more pretty.(5) “Why, Mr. Stuart,
you have painted me with my mouth open!” said a particularly talkative sitter,
to which Stuart responded, “Madam, your mouth is always open,” and refused
to complete the picture.(6) Mrs. Peabody was right in feeling somewhat
apprehensive about her portrait.
The use of a palette heavily weighted in brown was due to the sensibilities
of the time. Sombre tones, it was felt, lent a dignity and a soberness to
the painting. Bright colors were, like the baser aspects of human nature,
to be restrained. Indeed, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first President of the
Royal Academy in London and a contemporary of Stuart’s, recommended “an overall
somberness, indicating that the solemn effect all painting should aspire to
was best conveyed by the twilight tones”(7). The portrait of Mrs.
Peabody has not aged or discolored more than any other work of the time. The
restricted palette was from choice and intention, in keeping with the ideas
of the time.
Stuart, despite his ever present gorge, was capable and indeed known
for charming his sitters with his talk and would discuss anything under the
sun while painting. His portraits were renowned for their ability to penetrate
and reveal the person being painted. The portrait of Mrs. Peabody indicates
the unease that she related to her son in the way she looks out at the viewer.
Unease, however, is not the only thing present as Stuart shows the dignity
that came with her age and bearing and the presence of her individuality.
Stuart was very adept with his brush and stressed observation and adherence
to one’s own nature as a way of achieving pictoral truth. He did not believe
in the practice of drawing, just painting. “It is nonsense to think of perfecting
oneself in drawing before one begins to paint. When the hand is not able to
execute the decision of the mind, a fastidiousness ensues, and on its back
disappointment and disgust’”(8) In many ways his use of the “blunt
stroke”, in which the initial brush stroke was left as is and not blended
further, reflected past masters such as Franz Hals and presaged moderns such
as Claude Monet. An example of this can be found in the face of Mrs. Peabody.
The different flesh tones are clearly distinguishable and are not the result
of carefully building up and blending. Stuart’s blunt stroke shows both his
judgement, and his confidence.
Portrait paintings reflect the ideas of the painters as well as the
rendering of the subject. As the subject is before us, it is good to try an
imagine the person that painted it. That person was Gilbert Stuart who, a
year before his death, remarked on a portrait of Napoleon: “How delicately
the lace is drawn; did one ever see a richer satin? The ermine is wonderful
in its finish; and, by Jove, the thing has a head!”(9)
Notes
(1) Mount, Charles Merrill, Gilbert Stuart, W.W. Norton, N.Y., 1964, p. 278
(2) Mount, p. 286
(3) Allston, Washinton, et al., Artists of America, Kennedy Galleries, N.Y.,
1846, rep. 1970, p. 132
(4) Flexner, On Desperate Seas, Fordham University Press, N.Y., 1995, p. 172
(5) Flexner, p. 138
(6) Flexner, p. 138
(7) Parry, G., The Purpose and Tendency of Pre-Raphaelite Art, Columbia University,
1969, p. 160
(8) Mount, p. 306
(9) Mount, p. 330
Suggested Reading
James Thomas Flexner, On Desperate Seas, (Fordham University Press, N.Y.),
1995
Charles Merrill Mount, Gilbert Stuart, (W.W. Norton, N.Y.), 1964
Michael Stevenson
Research Assistant
Graduate Student - Painting and Drawing
Fall 1997
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