Stuart moved to Newport, Rhode Island, at the age of six, where his father pursued work in the merchant field. In Newport, he first began to show great promise as a painter.<ref>Gilbert Stuart BirthplaceTemplate:Webarchive. Gilbert Stuart. Retrieved July 28, 2007.</ref> In 1770, he made the acquaintance of Scottish artist Cosmo Alexander, a visitor to the colonies who made portraits of local patrons and who became a tutor to Stuart.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Stuart, Redwood">Template:Cite web</ref> Under the guidance of Alexander, Stuart painted the portrait Dr. Hunter's Spaniels when he was 14; it hangs today in the Hunter House Mansion in Newport.<ref name="Stuart Museum"/>
In 1771, Stuart moved to Scotland with Alexander to finish his studies; however, Alexander died in Edinburgh one year later. Stuart tried to maintain a living and pursue his painting career, but to no avail, so he returned to Newport in 1773.<ref name="Stuart, Germantown">Template:Cite web</ref>
Stuart's prospects as a portraitist were jeopardized by the onset of the American Revolution and its social disruptions. Although he was a patriot,<ref>Evans 1999, p. 10</ref> he departed for England in 1775 following the example set by John Singleton Copley.<ref name=lon>National Gallery of ArtTemplate:Webarchive. Gilbert Stuart. London (1775–1787). Retrieved July 31, 2007.</ref> His painting style during this period began to develop beyond the relatively hard-edged and linear style that he had learned from Alexander.<ref>National Gallery of Art. Retrieved November 24, 2019.</ref> He was unsuccessful at first in pursuit of his vocation, but he became a protégé of Benjamin West in 1777 and studied with him for the next six years. The relationship was beneficial, with Stuart exhibiting for the first time at the Royal Academy in spring of 1777.<ref name="Grove">Christman, M., & Barlow, M. (2003). Stuart [Stewart], Gilbert. Grove Art Online. Retrieved November 29, 2019.</ref>
By 1782, Stuart had met with success, largely due to acclaim for The Skater, a portrait of Sir William Grant. It was Stuart's first full-length portrait and, according to a rival, it belied the prevailing opinion that Stuart "made a tolerable likeness of a face, but as to the figure, he could not get below the fifth button'".<ref name="Oxfordartonline">Christman, Margaret C. S. "Stuart, Gilbert." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Retrieved October 1, 2012</ref> Stuart said that he was "suddenly lifted into fame by a single picture".<ref>National Gallery of ArtTemplate:Webarchive.The Skater (Portrait of William Grant), 1782. Retrieved November 23, 2014.</ref>
The prices for his pictures were exceeded only by those of renowned English artists Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Despite his many commissions, however, he was habitually neglectful of finances and was in danger of being sent to debtors' prison. In 1787, he fled to Dublin, Ireland where he painted and accumulated debt with equal vigor.<ref>National Gallery of ArtTemplate:Webarchive. Gilbert Stuart. Dublin (1787–1793). Retrieved July 31, 2007.</ref>
New York City and Philadelphia
Stuart ended his 18-year stay in Britain and Ireland in 1793, leaving behind numerous unfinished paintings. He returned to the United States with a particular goal of painting a portrait of George Washington and having an engraver reproduce it and provide for his family through the engraving's sale.<ref>Park et al. (1926), p. 44.</ref> He settled briefly in New York City and pursued portrait commissions from influential people who could bring him to Washington's attention.<ref name="Grove" /> In 1794, he painted statesman John Jay, from whom he received a letter of introduction to Washington. In 1795, Stuart moved to the Germantown section of Philadelphia, where he opened a studio,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Washington posed for him later that year.<ref name="Grove" />
Stuart painted Washington in a series of iconic portraits, each of them leading to a demand for copies and keeping him busy and highly paid for years.<ref>National Gallery of ArtTemplate:Webarchive. Gilbert Stuart. Philadelphia (1794–1803). Retrieved July 31, 2007.</ref> The most famous and celebrated of these likenesses, the Athenaeum portrait, is portrayed on the United States one-dollar bill. Stuart painted about 50 reproductions of it.<ref>"George Washington Portrait by Gilbert Stuart"Template:Webarchive, www.mountvernon.org. Retrieved September 14, 2019.</ref> However, he avoided completing the original version. After finishing Washington's face, he kept it to make copies which he sold for $100 each. Thus, the original portrait remained in its unfinished state at the time of his death in 1828.<ref name="Athenaeum">Template:Cite web</ref> An engraver at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, George Frederick Cumming Smillie, made an etching of the painting which was used on multiple banknotes. A vignette of the portrait appears on the 1899 2-dollar silver certificate, and the one dollar note of (1918 to 2023). United States one-dollar bills featured the image for decades (1918 to 2023).<ref name="Schöne">Template:Cite news</ref>
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson paid Suart $100.00 for a portrait but never received it, because in 1805, Suart painted another portrait of Jefferson over the 1800 portrait. In 1821, Stuart sent a copy of the 1805 portrait to Jefferson the so called "Edgehill" portrait. The original 1805 portrait became part of Jane Stuart collection until it was damaged in a fire in 1853. In 1937, Orland Campbell acquired the 1805 portrait and discovered the truth.<ref>Template:Cite web access date May 14, 2025</ref> In June 1959, Campbell had an exhibit at Amherst College of the 1800/1805 portrait and his reconstruction of the "lost" 1800 portrait.<ref>Template:Cite webaccess date May 14, 2025</ref> Campbell also published an account "The Lost Portraits of Thomas Jefferson Painted by Gilbert Stuart Recovered and Studied by Orland and Courtney Campbell" (1959).
Boston, 1805–1828
Stuart moved to Devonshire Street in Boston in 1805, continuing in both critical acclaim and financial troubles.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He exhibited works locally at Doggett's Repository<ref>Daily Advertiser, March 2, 1822</ref> and Julien Hall.<ref>Boston Commercial Gazette, December 1, 1825</ref> Predictably, he was sought out for advice by other American artists, such as John Trumbull, Thomas Sully, Washington Allston, and John Vanderlyn.<ref name="Oxfordartonline" />
Personal life
Stuart married Charlotte Coates around September 1786; she was 13 years his junior and "exceedingly pretty".<ref>Quote from Jane Stuart in Evans 2013, p. 14.</ref> They had 12 children, five of whom died by 1815 and two others of whom died in their youth. Their daughter Jane (1812–1888) was also a painter. She sold many of his paintings and her replicas of them from her studios in Boston and Newport, Rhode Island.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2011, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.<ref name="RI Heritage Hall of Fame" />
In 1824, Stuart suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed, but he continued to paint for two years until his death in Boston on July 9, 1828, at 72.<ref>McLanathan 1986, p. 148.</ref> He was buried in the Central Burial Ground at Boston Common.
Stuart left his family deeply in debt, and his wife and daughters were unable to purchase a grave site. He was, therefore, buried in an unmarked grave which was purchased cheaply from Benjamin Howland, a local carpenter.<ref>McLanathan 1986, p. 150.</ref> His family recovered from their financial troubles 10 years later, and they planned to move his body to a family cemetery in Newport. However, they could not remember the exact location of his body, and it was never moved.<ref>Wolpaw, Jim. Gilbert Stuart: A Portrait from Life (9-Minute Trailer). Documentary.</ref> There is a monument for Stuart, his wife, and their children at the Common Burying Ground in Newport.<ref name="RIH Cemetery Commission" />
The Boston Athenæum held a benefit exhibition of Stuart's works in August 1828 in an effort to provide financial aid for his family. More than 250 portraits were lent for this critically acclaimed and well-subscribed exhibition. This also marked the first public showing of his unfinished 1796 Athenæum portrait of Washington.<ref>Swan, Mabel Munson The Athenæum Gallery 1827–1873: The Boston Athenæum as an Early Patron of Art (Boston: The Boston Athenæum, 1940) pp. 62–73</ref>
Legacy
By the end of his career, Gilbert Stuart had painted the likenesses of more than 1,000 American political and social figures.<ref>
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</ref> He was praised for the vitality and naturalness of his portraits, and his subjects found his company agreeable. John Adams said:
Stuart was known for working without the aid of sketches, beginning directly upon the canvas. His approach is suggested by the advice which he gave to his pupil Matthew Harris Jouett: "Never be sparing of colour, load your pictures, but keep your colours as separate as you can. No blending, tis destruction to clear & bea[u]tiful effect."<ref name="Oxfordartonline" /> Although this is an exaggeration to avoid muddiness, Stuart's colors were remarkably fresh. At Stuart's best, he had an extraordinary ability to convey the impression of "luminous, transparent flesh" with color coming from beneath. The face seemed to be embued with life, while the beauty of its coloring conveyed a spiritual quality to contemporaries.<ref>Evans 1999, pp. 28, 56, 95-96 (quote), 105-06, 110, 118.</ref> Although uneven, he could produce astonishingly strong likenesses.<ref>Evans 1999, pp. 27, 56. For uneven, see Evans 2013, pp. 18-19, 69-73, 82-84, 148.</ref>
John Henri Isaac Browere created a life mask of Stuart around 1825.<ref>Charles Henry Hart. Browere's life masks of great Americans. Printed at the De Vinne Press for Doubleday and McClure Company, 1899. Internet Archive</ref> In 1940, the U.S. Post Office issued a series of postage stamps called the "Famous Americans Series" commemorating famous artists, authors, inventors, scientists, poets, educators, and musicians. Gilbert Stuart is found on the 1 cent issue in the artists category, along with James McNeill Whistler, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Daniel Chester French, and Frederic Remington.
Today, Stuart's birthplace in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, is open to the public as the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum. The birthplace consists of the original house where he was born, with copies of his paintings hanging throughout the house, as well as a separate art gallery in which are displayed several original paintings by both Gilbert Stuart and his daughter Jane. The museum opened in 1931.<ref>
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Gilbert Stuart's paintings of Washington, Jefferson, and others have served as models for dozens of U.S. postage stamps. Washington's image from the famous portrait The Athenaeum is probably the most noted example of Stuart's work on postage.
This lithograph of Little Turtle is reputedly based upon a lost portrait by Gilbert Stuart that was destroyed when the British burned Washington in 1814.Template:Sfn
Gilbert Stuart, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilbert Stuart 2004-2005 exhibit organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (exhibited October 21, 2004 - January 16, 2005) and the National Portrait Gallery; exhibited at the National Gallery of Art March 27 - July 31, 2005
Lawrence Park Research Files on Gilbert Stuart correspondence and notes concerning the history and authentication of paintings by Stuart begun by Lawrence Park and completed by William Sawitzky, resulting in Gilbert Stuart: an Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works.
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