Stuart, Gilbert

1755

1828

Gilbert Stuart was born in Narragansett, Rhode Island, in 1755. After receiving some instruction from the Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander, he accompanied the latter to Scotland in 1772. After his master’s death, he returned home, but came back to England in 1755, at the age of 20, where he found a friend and master in his fellow American, Benjamin West. By 1785 he had established himself as a successful portrait painter in London but returned to America seven years later to work in New York, Washington and Philadelphia, settling finally in Boston, where he spent the rest of his life. He exhibited thirteen portraits at the Royal Academy between 1777 and 1785. He is, perhaps, best known for his many portraits of George Washington, but he had other noted sitters including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Philip Kemble and Alderman Boydell. His best-loved portrait is that of William Grant skating in St James’s Park, a painting now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.