The most successful and resourceful portraitist of America’s early national period, Gilbert Stuart (17551828) possessed enormous natural talent, bringing his witty and irascible manner to bear on each of his works. This handsome book highlights Stuart’s achievements by presenting more than ninety portraits of exceptional quality, ranging from the early works he produced in Newport, Rhode Island, to those he executed just before his death in Boston.
Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles show how Stuart developed and maintained a distinctive portrait style, tailoring his portrayals to fit his subjects. They trace the development of his art from his hometown of Newport, where he proved his talent, to his years in London and Dublin, where he mastered the techniques of the English late-eighteenth-century Grand Manner, to his return to America (no longer the Colonies but now the United States), where he dealt with clients in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston. The authors provide a short essay about Stuart in each of the sites of his production, which introduces the works painted there. There is also a special section devoted to Stuart’s famous and popular portraits of Washington, the so-called Vaughan, Athenaeum, and Lansdowne portraits. These works are discussed in terms of patronage, technique, chronology, and interpretation.
The most comprehensive book on the artist’s work to date, Gilbert Stuart is essential for anyone who admires American art and history.

Gilbert Stuart (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

Arts & Photography

Barratt, Carrie Rebora

Miles, Ellen G.

Individual Artists

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The National Gallery's collection of eighteenth-century American paintings includes some of its greatest treasures and most beloved national icons. John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark, Gilbert Stuart's The Skater (Portrait of William Granti) and George Washington (Vaughan portrait)--as well as his portraits of the first five presidents of the United States, the so-called Gibbs-Coolidge portraits--and Edward Savage's Washington Family. Ellen G. Miles, curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, presents new research culled from letters, wills, and other previously unpublished documents that offer a fresh perspective on the artists and sitters, as well as new insight into the paintings. (This publication is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation).

American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (A ^APublication of the National Gallery of Art, Washington)

History & Criticism

Princeton University Press

Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections presents little-known artistic treasures from important Washington area private collections. These portraits by major artists date from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, and they speak to the many reasons that paintings and sculpture continue to represent and capture human likenesses and personalities. Privately collected, commissioned, or inherited, they have seldom, if ever, been seen in a public setting. The catalogue, which accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from April 1 through September 5, 2011, illustrates the portraits and recounts their histories, including comments by living sitters about having their portraits made.

Capital Portraits: Treasures from Washington Private Collections

Carr, Carolyn Kinder

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

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