This portrait of a young man, identified as J. Ward by the inscription on his dog's collar, was painted while Gilbert Stuart, a Rhode Island native, was working in the London studio of his mentor Benjamin West. The sitter's pose, costume and canine companion were all meant to allude to the great 17th century portraitist, Anthony Van Dyck, who was much admired by Stuart's contemporaries. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779.

THE HOUSE
The John Stuart house has three stories and is built of black cypress with hearth pine timbers and flooring. It still stands today at 106 Tradd Street, on the corner of Tradd and Orange Streets.

Its floor plan is typical of 18th-century architecture in Charleston, South Carolina, which adapted the popular neo-classic style to suit the warm southern climate. For example, whereas the kitchen in northern houses was usually considered a room of the house proper, in the south, the kitchen was often a separate structure from the house. In addition, the house has essentially been turned sideways so that the longer side of the house borders the garden and the narrow side of the house fronts on the street. The reception room is located to one side of the entrance hall; the opposite side of the hall is flanked by a porch or gallery which opens onto the gardens. Because of their open construction, the rooms that opened onto the galleries, such as our drawing room, tended to be cooler than the remainder of the house. The Drawing Room fronted on the street. (See floor plan.)

Other climatic modifications include very high ceilings and large windows to let in the cool summer breezes, a stark contrast to the snug interiors of northern homes, exemplified by the Connecticut Room.

Gilbert Stuart's paintings vary as much in quality as did his standard of living. A mercurial figure, with astounding talents and corresponding self-assurance, he painted portraits of some of the most prominent figures of his time, both in Britain and in the new United States. Some of these are exceptional studies of character and material; others are routine depictions of visages.The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has recently added a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Judge Daniel Coney of Maine (figure 1) to its collection. This painting joins three others by the same artist: James Ward of 1779, Henry Lambert of 1780-81, and Alexander Townsend of 1809. The Institute is fortunate in having these four paintings in its collection, because they are examples of Stuart's changing styles and enthusiasms. Together they provide an outline in which to view his career.Briefly, because his biography has been chronicled elsewhere (the most pleasant being E. P. Richardson's short introductory essay to the catalog of the 1967 exhibition Gilbert Stuart, Portraitist of the Young Republic, for the Rhode Island School of Design), let us fit our four portraits into his career.Stuart was born in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, on December 3, 1755. Until he met Cosmo Alexander, a Scottish portrait painter who was in Newport in 1769, his circumstances were humble and his life uneventful. In 1771 Stuart became Alexander's apprentice and returned with him to Edinburgh. Unfortunately, the Scot died in 1772 and Stuart was left to rely on his own meager resources. He worked his way back to Rhode Island and, using what he had learned from Alexander, painted rather flat, linear portraits of Newport merchants until he sailed to England in September of 1775.Stuart's initial London experience was an unhappy one and, according to his daughter Jane and his friend Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, crushed his normally flamboyant and ebullient spirit. In the summer of 1777 Benjamin West, the most famous American painter of his day (who was by then living in London and was history painter to George III) accepted Stuart as an assistant. Their association lasted until 1782, and it was during this period that two of the Minneapolis portraits were painted, James Ward and Henry Lambert.The Ward portrait (figure 2) displays Stuart's style at the moment when it relied most heavily on that of Gainsborough: it is fluid, fresh, and altogether charming. Henry Lambert, likewise, is a fine example of English rococo style (figure 3). A typical portrait from the artist's English period, it shows the subject, down to the fifth button on his waistcoat, confidently confronting the viewer (Stuart was once accused of being unable to paint anything below the fifth button of a gentlemen's waistcoat because his portraits are so often that length).Portraits like James Ward and Henry Lambert, and particularly his famous painting The Skater (National Gallery of Art, Washington), enabled Stuart to leave West's studio and establish himself independently. He became a very successful portrait painter in the London of Reynolds, Romney, and Gainsborough. He also proudly lived beyond his means, and in the late summer of 1787 fled to Ireland to escape debts and prison.By 1793, Stuart was in New York, having left Ireland for the same reason. There, he began to apply his considerable talents to depict the most famous Americans of his day. His three versions of George Washington (and their numerous replicas and copies) are firmly established icons in the minds of most of us. Between 1803 and 1805 Stuart resided in Washington. He left Washington for Boston in 1805, and lived there until his death on July 9, 1828, at the age of 72. Our other two portraits date from this last period.The portrait of Alexander Townsend (figure 4) is a classic example of what has made Stuart's American portraits so much admired. Townsend was in his middle twenties when the portrait was done, and Stuart shows him with all the freshness and vitality of youth. The brushstroke is free and light, the colors delicate and translucent. Stuart always wanted to portray his sitters in animated, informal poses; to accomplish this he attempted to engage them in diverting conversations. In the Townsend portrait he was successful, for he has captured the spirit of the young man.The Coney portrait depicts a sitter different in character and age, and differs stylistically as well. Daniel Coney was a member of a distinguished New England family. He was the second son of Deacon Samuel Coney, who moved his family to Hallowell, Maine (near Augusta) from Massachusetts in 1777. Daniel was born in 1752 and served in the Revolutionary forces; he became adjutant of an infantry regiment under General Gates and witnessed Burgoyne's surrender. He married Susanna Curtis and followed his father to Maine in 1778. He was "eminent in his profession" and also politically prominent.¹ He represented his home city in the Massachusetts General Court, where he was a member of its Executive Council. He was a member of the second Electoral College and cast his vote to reelect George Washington and John Adams president and vice president respectively. He was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, then judge of probate for Kennebec County. At that time Maine was part of Massachusetts; when the regions were divided into two states, Coney was Augusta's delegate to Maine's constitutional convention, and then became judge of probate under that new constitution. He held office until 1823, resigning due to age: he was 71.Coney was all early and avid supporter of educational institutions. He was a trustee of Hallowell Academy, an overseer of Bowdoin College, and the founder and endower of Cony Female Academy in Augusta.² The Academy was built in 1815 at the judge's own expense. He was the father of four daughters and, as he wrote to prospective trustees that year:"The importance of female education has for a number of years been a subject of my most serious and anxious solicitude..." He recommended instruction gratis to such number of orphans and other females, under sixteen years of age, as shall be certified by a committee "of their board as worthy the bounty. [sic]"³The subjects to be taught here were "various useful and ornamental branches of female education," including "reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, history, etc. with every kind of useful and ornamental needle work, print work, etc."⁴North describes the judge's character thusly:Judge Cony was a man of vigorous intellect, sound judgment, quick perception and ready resource. He was uniformly successful in whatever he resolutely undertook, was a strong ally, a safe and vigorous leader, and he attained to an influence with his fellow men which few acquire. Decision and firmness were conspicuous traits in his character, while he was always cool, calculating and sagacious.⁵Judge Daniel Coney died January 21, 1842, when he was 90.When was this portrait done and how should it be evaluated? In the summer of 1805, Gilbert Stuart moved to Boston. Earlier, he had been commissioned by James Bowdoin, founder of Bowdoin College, to do a portrait of Jefferson and one of Madison. The portraits were hung in Bowdoin's home in Maine by 1807; in 1813 they went to the college. Stuart even visited them there in 1821.Lawrence Park dates the Coney portrait about 1815. It was possibly done after the Jefferson and Madison portraits were sent to Bowdoin College, where the judge, an overseer, must have seen them. 1815 seems a suitable date; the judge would have been 63 years old. We know him to have been a vigorous man, which can account for the youthfulness apparent in his face except around the mouth.The painting is executed in oil on a panel. It measures 24 by 28 inches (sight) and is in good condition. Coney is shown half-length, seated in three-quarter view, favoring his right side. He sits in a gilded directoire armchair upholstered in a warm red velvet. His right hand rests on a book; he wears a thin ring on his middle finger. Behind the judge's left arm is a table covered with a cloth of the same color as the velvet. Atop this, two volumes are stacked together on their sides; another stands upright, seemingly supported by the painting's frame, a fourth leans against this volume. The books are bound in light brown with labels of the same red; on one book we can make out the letters "ENNE".⁶ Coney is dressed in a simple high-collared black coat, with a white standing collar and neckcloth. He is shown against a background that ranges from pale to dark beige gray. His hair is cut short and combed forward on his forehead. His sideburns and eyebrows have not yet turned white to match the rest of his hair. The judge looks resolutely out at the viewer with blue gray eyes. His mouth is firmly set.The painting has an odd halo of crackle around the head. The head itself displays none of the fluent brushstroke or translucency we are drawn to in most Stuart portraits. It is vaguely dull.One always wants to speculate about how an artist could paint brilliantly at one sitting and dully at the next. E. P. Richardson notes that Stuart was able to paint "exceedingly perfunctory portraits" and occasionally displayed, "let us admit, a blandness in mood and characterization that delighted his contemporaries, and the Edwardian period, but that stands in his way today."⁷ Richardson goes on to observe that Stuart gave us no surprises after moving to Boston. When a sitter aroused his interest, his portraits were still unsurpassed (see his painting of the elderly John Adams at the Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Fine Arts). When he had no sympathy for the sitter, however, there was "a relaxation of interest and ambition."⁸Stuart's student Jouett tells us Stuart preferred his earlier paintings, for he said "the reasons why my paintings were of a richer character thirty years ago: then it was a matter of experiment; now everything comes so handy that I put down everything so much in place that for want of opportunities...[I] lose the richness."⁹ Perhaps, as Barbara Novak O'Doherty suggests, some faces just didn't interest Stuart.¹⁰ Coney seems to have been one of these.Let's speculate about why Coney didn't arouse Stuart's interest and sympathy. One of Coney's foremost achievements was his foundation and endowment of the Cony Female Academy. Its curriculum, as we have seen, included instruction in art. Coney also supported other educational institutions that must have included art in their curricula. Stuart had strong opinions on art education, relates James Thomas Flexner. When wealthy citizens of Boston discussed founding an art academy, Stuart said that trustees of such institutions had more money than taste, and as for formal instruction, it merely encouraged the incompetent. "Bye and bye," he shouted, "you will not by any chance kick your foot against a dog kennel but out will start a portrait painter." Stuart foresaw modern conditions under which you cannot by any chance step on a young lady's toe at a debutante party but "ouch" will be said by a writer or painter.¹¹How could Coney, who founded his academy in 1815, have aroused the sympathy and imagination of so opinionated a painter, for whom he sat in perhaps the same year? Idle speculation, but perhaps an explanation for the perfunctory quality of the painting.In 1926, Lawrence Park reports, the painting hung in the old Williams House in Augusta, but it was owned by Mrs. Seth C. Beach of Watertown, Mass., and Mrs. Henry T. Whipple of Portland, Maine.¹² It passed from there to the collection of Esther S. Fraser of Cambridge, Mass. (who believed the painting was made in Boston about 1812 and was interned there for about a year, due to the embargo on shipping during the war of 1812).¹³ Later Mrs. Allyn K. Ford purchased the painting, and generously donated it to the Institute in 1975.Before coming to Minneapolis, the painting seems to have been on public exhibition only once, at the Union League Club in New York in February of 1922. An engraving of it has been reproduced in Nason's book and (slightly altered) in North's. Park says it was engraved on steel, in vignette, by A. H. Ritchie. This may be the plate used in the two historical volumes.The painting is a valuable addition to the collection for two reasons. It is, first, a record of an important figure in the political and educational history of this nation. Second, it is a document that speaks of Gilbert Stuart, the mercurial painter, who sought to use portraiture as a means to search out his subjects' spirits. When it was a spirit he felt akin to, as that of James Ward, Henry Lambert, or Alexander Townsend, the image was alive with stroke and color. When it was a spirit he felt no sympathy toward-and this author suggests Coney was such a spirit-the image is merely faithful.Judith Sobol is Executive Director of Don't Tear It Down, a citizen's action group for urban conservation in Washington, D.C. She was formerly Assistant Chairman of the Education Division and Supervisor of Tours and Interpretive Services at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.Endnotes

1. Emma Huntington Nason, Old Hallowell on the Kennebec (Augusta, Maine, 1909), p. 30. Although we would assume that, as a judge, Coney's profession was law, James N. North, in his History of Augusta (Augusta: Clapp and North, 1870), refers to his "preparing himself for the medical profession" (p. 170) and refers to him as "Dr." Coney (p. 171). He goes on to describe him as very active in medicine and a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society (p. 172).
2. The spelling of the family name varies; it is often "Cony."
3. North, pp. 422-3.
4. Ava Harriet Chadbourne, A History of Education in Maine (Orono, Maine, 1936), p. 131. Chadbourne here quotes the American Advocate of March 31, 1816. Cony Female Academy is survived by Cony High School.
5. North, p. 172. Anecdotes about the judge appear on pp. 172 and 201.
6. Family tradition says this is a volume of Seneca, his favorite author.
7. E. P. Richardson, Gilbert Stuart, Portraitist of the Young Republic (Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 1967), p. 20.
8. Ibid., p. 32.
9. James Thomas Flexner, America's Old Masters (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), p. 302.
10. Barbara Novak O'Doherty, "Philosopher of the Face," Artnews 66, no. 4 (Summer 1967): 44.
11. James Thomas Flexner, Gilbert Stuart (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), pp. 169-170.
12. Lawrence Park, Gilbert Stuart (New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1926), p. 234.
13. Letter of Mrs. Ford in file at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, n.d.

Referenced Works of Art

1. Gilbert Stuart
   American, 1755-1826
   Judge Daniel Coney of Maine, about 1815
   Oil on canvas, 28-1/4 x 22-3/4 inches
   Gift of Mrs. Allyn K. Ford, 75.29
2. Gilbert Stuart
   James Ward, 1779
   Oil on canvas, 29-1/2 x 25 inches
   The William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 16.2
3. Gilbert Stuart
   Henry Lambert, 1780-81
   Oil on canvas, 30-1/4 x 25-1/8 inches
   Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James Ford Bell, 31.36
4. Gilbert Stuart
   Alexander Townsend, 1809
   Oil on canvas, 33-3/8 x 26-3/8 inches
   Gift of the heirs of Mrs. Vernon A. Wright, 51.34

With the increasing interest in American art, now manifesting itself in all corners of the country, there has lately appeared a corresponding interest in the backgrounds of American painting and a consequent revaluation of those early artists who were the first practitioners of painting in this country and who, consciously or not, launched the first tradition of American painting. Artists and laymen alike are observing their work with a more attentive eye and finding in it much that is worthy of praise. Despite the fact that English influence was strong, early examples of American painting possess a flavor that, for all its foreign overtones, marks them as native works of art.Prominent among these early native artists is Gilbert Stuart, whose style may be studied at the Institute in three portraits painted during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These are the portrait of Alexander Townsend painted in 1809, which has been a generous loan from Mrs. Vernon Wright since 1915; the portrait of Master James Ward acquired from the Dunwoody Fund in 1916; and the portrait of Henry Lambert presented to the Institute by Mr. and Mrs. James Ford Bell in 1931.Stuart's style in masculine portraiture is well illustrated in these works. He early formed the habit of capturing vital expressions and recording them instantaneously, and his technique was instrumental to the success of this method. Because he cared more for nature than he did for “art” he was not given to undue flattery in portraiture. This is one reason, no doubt, why his portraits of men are not only more numerous but on the whole more satisfying than his portraits of women. The three works that have long been familiar to visitors to the Institute reveal him primarily as a painter of men, and two of them, the portraits of James Ward and Henry Lambert painted in London during his English period, show him to have been a worthy competitor in the style of his English colleagues.The exact date of Stuart's arrival in England from America is not known, but it was probably late in the fall of 1775. Sometime after he passed his twenty-first birthday (December 3, 1776), Stuart wrote as follows to Benjamin West asking for help and encouragement: “. . . Pitty me Good Sir I've just arriv'd att the age of 21 an age when most young men have done something worthy of notice & find myself Ignorant withoutt business or Friends . . .” West must have responded promptly to his plea, for Stuart's painting, the Portrait of a Gentleman, was accepted by the Royal Academy for exhibition early in 1777. Since West was on the hanging committee it is not improbable that this honor was the result of his kind interest in Stuart.It is interesting to note that Stuart himself later exhibited a similar interest in young painters who came to him for advice and encouragement. The peculiar qualities of his work: the freshness and transparency of the flesh painting and the frank but dignified expression of character, were the despair of those who endeavored to emulate him. “It is of no use” Benjamin West once said in speaking of him, “to steal Stuart's colors; if you want to paint as he does you must steal his eyes.” When young artists came to him for enlightenment on those matters, Stuart counseled them to seek as carefully for the colors in the complexion as for the character of the sitter, thus giving them the secret of his own greatness.Shortly after his appeal to West, in the summer of 1777, Stuart was invited to take up his quarters in the household of his benefactor, whose pupil and assistant he became. His name did not appear in the Royal Academy catalogue for 1778, but in 1779 he had three works accepted: No. 317, A Young Gentleman, Three Quarters; No. 318, A Little Girl; No. 318*, A Head. Number 317 of this group has been identified as the portrait of Master James Ward which now belongs to the Art Institute. It is an attractive picture in which the subject is presented in a half-length, three-quarter front view. He is dressed in a costume of the time of Van Dyck, and his left hand, just visible, is resting on the back of a dog. The portrait is signed “G. C. Stuart, 1779,” and the dog's collar is marked with the name “J. Ward.”It has been suggested that the subject of this painting is the engraver and animal painter, James Ward, who was born in 1769 and who later became a member of the Royal Academy, and a painter and engraver to the Prince of Wales. This is an interesting and probably accurate identification, inasmuch as Ward's first known contact with the arts is said to have been made in the shop of the engraver J. R. Smith, with whom Stuart made friends during his stay in London. Since Ward was working with Smith shortly after the time the portrait was painted, it is quite possible that Stuart may have met him through their mutual acquaintance, Smith.In this canvas, as in a self-portrait done the year before, the luminous flesh painting of Stuart's mature style appears. Since this technique is totally unlike that which the artist used in his work prior to 1777, notably in the portrait of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, dated 1776 and now in the Redwood Library in Newport, and since the technique bears a strong resemblance to that employed by the famous painter Thomas Gainsborough, it has been assumed that Stuart must have seen and admired Gainsborough's paintings, which appeared in the Royal Academy exhibition for the first time in 1777.In painting the face it was Stuart's custom, after establishing the major relationships, to build up the tones with a number of small strokes, using a variety of tints which from a distance would mingle to produce a vital, luminous, flesh-like quality that has seldom been equalled in the work of other artists. His feeling for the beautiful color and texture of skin is also revealed by his remark that “Flesh is like no other substance under heaven. It has all the gaiety of a silk-mercer's shop without its gaudiness of gloss, and all the softness of old mahogany without its sadness.” It is obvious, from a comparison of their work, that Stuart did not learn this method of flesh painting from West. This is further evidenced by his famous complaint to John Trumbull that West painted in “streaks.” “But,” said Stuart, “nature does not color in streaks, look at my hand; see how the colors are mottled and mingled; yet all is clear as silver.”In the portrait of James Ward, the background with the conventional tree and sky pattern, the richly and boldly painted costume, the head of the dog in the lower right corner, combine with the pose of the figure to produce an unusually pleasant composition whose decorative quality is more marked than most of Stuart's portraits.At some time after it was exhibited, this painting disappeared and was not found until the beginning of this century, when an Englishwoman discovered it hanging in the dining room of a cottage in Oxfordshire. It belonged to an old man of some ninety years who had purchased it at a sale about fifty years before, and who refused to part with it. His niece, however, promised it to the visitor when the old man should want it no longer. She kept her word, and one day a messenger boy arrived at the house of the Englishwoman with the news that “Uncle died this morning, the picture is yours.” So the portrait of Master James Ward passed from the walls of an Oxfordshire cottage, through the hands of the woman who discovered it, to the Art Institute, where it is assured a permanent resting place.Like the Ward portrait, Stuart's painting of Henry Lambert, which now hangs in the Institute's Charleston Drawing Room, was executed during the artist's stay in London. It is undated, but it must certainly have been painted midway in the 1780s. In both technique and general composition it is strikingly like Stuart's portrait of Benjamin West, painted in 1785 and now in the National Gallery in London. Stuart's style at that time was greatly admired in England, and numerous articles in current periodicals reveal his popularity and his extraordinary ability in catching the likeness of his sitters. In February, 1786, for instance, the Morning Cronicle states that Stuart, “who singularly excels in the great excellence of portrait painting, accuracy of similitude, has made a head of Kemble for Macbeth, marvellously exact.”By 1785 Stuart had left the studio of Benjamin West and set up for himself, having acquired, under West's tutelage, social graces, rare conversational ability, and a taste for elegant living—in addition to technical competence and good habits of work.These qualities are reflected in the portrait of Henry Lambert, who may be identified with a famous English naval officer of the time. He is a gracious person, whose relaxed manner is in marked contrast to the alert expression of his eyes. In his mauve silk coat with its frilled jabot he was, without a doubt, a sympathetic subject for the brush of a man who, in his personal dress, “emulated in style and costliness the leader of English fashion, the then Prince of Wales.”Again in the Lambert portrait we see Stuart's sensitive rendering of skin, and his disregard for the careful drawing of West. Yet there is evident a slight dependence upon line which distinguished Stuart's technique from that of his exemplar, Gainsborough. Here Stuart has used his favorite twilled canvas whose diagonal ridges seem to reflect light through the thin liquid pigment. The painting of the hands in this portrait, as in that of Benjamin West, is unusually strong and characterful for Stuart, who was inclined to give less attention to them than to the head. He has treated the background with great simplicity, avoiding superfluous details which would distract attention from the portrait itself.This restraint was customary with Stuart, and is all the more remarkable in the work of a man who was competing with the decorative portrait painters of eighteenth-century England. They placed great emphasis upon the impressive effects that could be achieved by rich drapery, elegant poses, and elaborate backgrounds. The sketchy painting of the lace cuffs and jabot in the Lambert portrait gives additional evidence of Stuart's indifference to the meticulous treatment of detail with which his English colleagues were so deeply occupied. His free, spontaneous touch, so apparent in the Lambert portrait, has often been regarded as the fortunate result of a physical infirmity. Stuart had, from his early years, a great unsteadiness of hand which prohibited a labored method of painting. The spontaneity resulting from his free brushwork, together with his desire to achieve natural rather than artistic effects, gave Stuart's work its usual conviction.This quality of conviction is particularly to be noted in the third of the Stuart portraits exhibited at the Institute, that of Alexander Townsend, which is markedly different in character from the English works described above. It shows Stuart to have been capable of adapting himself to a new set of requirements in portraiture without sacrificing anything of his essential individuality.The Townsend portrait was painted in 1809, some years after Stuart had returned to America from England. After painting numerous historical personages in this country he had settled in Boston, and it was there that he did the portrait of Alexander Townsend, a well-known physician who had been graduated by the Harvard Medical School in 1802. Unlike the two portraits of the English period, this picture is painted on a panel. Stuart habitually used mahogany for his panels, and had the painting surface finished off with a plane whose finely notched blade produced a diagonal ridging suggestive of the twilled canvas he often used.It is a fresh and appealing work, in which Townsend is presented as a thoughtful young man with an amused and speculative eye. The general sobriety of the portrait, resulting partially from the plain dark background and partially from the severe dress of the subject, is lightened by the painting of the face. Here the clear color of the flesh, with its shimmering carnation and silver tones, provides a sparkling contrast to the simple dark coat and background.The sobriety is quite in keeping with the American portrait style of the period, reflecting the current national taste for simplicity and dignity. The years immediately preceding 1809 had seen the exercise of an American foreign policy aimed at isolation that should be cultural as well as economic and political. In public sympathy there was an attendant swing away from anything which might be identified as English and, as such, an expression of monarchical and aristocratic ideas. The elaborate English portrait style lost favor somewhat, and the rugged, honest paintings by our native artists gained appeal. Though Stuart has been called the “valedictorian of the English style” in American, his individual ability to produce a vital, convincing likeness insured his continued popularity as an artist up to the time of his death in 1828.Viewed retrospectively, the finesse of his method and his desire above all to express true character show him to have been an accomplished technician who inherited and displayed that liking for personal independence which has always been the distinguishing feature of American art and life. It is for this reason that many of our artists today are turning back to the work of Gilbert Stuart with interest and respect, and it is this which has won him the title of “America's Old Master.”Referenced Works of Art

1. Portrait of Henry Lambert by Gilbert Stuart. American, 1754-1828. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James Ford Bell.
2. Portrait of Master James Ward by Gilbert Stuart, painted in London in 1779. Acquired from the Dunwoody Fund, 1916.
3. Portrait of Alexander Townsend by Gilbert Stuart, painted in Boston in 1809. Lent by Mrs. Vernon Wright.

The Society has just acquired from the income of the Dunwoody Fund a notable painting by Gilbert Stuart, the Portrait of Master Ward, signed and dated 1779. This portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779 under the title of Portrait of a Young Gentleman. The name written on the dog's collar reveals the personality of the young gentleman in question; namely, James Ward, later to become celebrated as an engraver. The portrait is signed G. C. Stuart; that is, Gilbert Charles Stuart. Stuart signed only three paintings, of which this is one. In later life the artist omitted the name Charles, added by his father, a strong Jacobite, to the boy's baptismal name of Gilbert. In this portrait the Society has acquired an extraordinary example, painted in his English period, of most the most distinguished of early American painters.This portrait, coming from an obscure English collection, is practically unknown, although it has been listed by Mr. Mantle Fielding as No. 147 in his list of "Paintings by Gilbert Stuart not mentioned in Mason's Life of Stuart," Penn. Magazine of History and Biography, July, 1914. Mr. Fielding does not, however, identify the personality of the sitter. An article on the portrait by Mr. Charles Henry Hart will appear in a forthcoming number of Art in America.In color and drawing, in skillful brush work, the portrait of Master Ward stands comparison with the work of the great masters of the English school of portrait painting contemporary with Stuart. In such a portrait as this, Stuart shows his right to stand with the great portrait painters of his age. While he is distinctly of the English school, and we must remember that our earliest American painting was an offshoot of that school with no national characteristics except that of provincialism, Stuart displays a marked individuality. As an artist he is an independent observer, seeing nature with his own eyes, and evolving a technique personal to his needs.His best portraits are characterized by a masterful expression of personality. It was generally upon this that he concentrated his effort, omitting or slurring over details of costume and accessories. "I copy the works of god and leave clothes to the tailor and the mantua-maker," said Stuart. And yet, if he felt that costume could be used to reveal character, he painted it with exquisite skill.In the portrait of Master Ward, the beautiful costume with its full sleeves and the drapery thrown over the shoulder contributes much to the charm of the picture. This fancy costume, evidently reminiscent of Van Dyck, one feels to be appropriate to this graceful young lad with his dog. In coloring, the picture is particularly attractive. The rose and silver tones of the face gain in value by contrast with the more subdued colors of the foliage background and the costume. The boy's hair is a golden brown. The full sleeves are a silvery brown; the drapery over the shoulder an exquisite blue which is repeated in the sky. The boy's coat is brown, and this color is repeated in the foliage and the dog's tousled hair.Gilbert Stuart was born in 1755 at Narragansett, R. I. As a youth he accompanied a Scotch painter, Cosmo Alexander, whom he met at Newport, to Scotland, where he entered Glasgow University. Alexander died shortly after, however, and Stuart, friendless and homesick, returned to America, where he continued to practice his art. Upon the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, as Stuart's family was of the Tory party, he sailed to England, where he was befriended by Benjamin West, in whose studio he worked for eight years as an assistant, although uninfluenced in either point of view or method by this academic painter. After leaving West, Stuart set up for himself and met with very considerable success. In 1792, however, impelled, it is said, by a desire to paint a portrait of George Washington, he returned to America where he lived and painted until his death in 1828 in Boston. He was the only American of his day who was in the true sense a painter. His work is never stiff and hard like that of Peale and Copley. Stuart saw nature as "an arrangement of colored masses variously affected by light," and in his brilliant brush work he anticipated many of the qualities that are characteristic of modern painting.Referenced Work of Art

1. Master Ward, by Gilbert Stuart