The Art Of Gilbert Stuart

( Originally Published 1906 )

SAMUEL ISHAM - THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING

GILBERT STUART still holds his place among our best painters, and even among his great contemporaries in England. His scope was limited. While they covered large canvases with full-length figures and groups, using every aid of composition and costume to produce their effects, and showing the result of this practice even in the arrangement of their half-length portraits, Stuart painted heads and little besides heads, as far as known not a single group, a few full-lengths, mOre half-lengths, a large number of what used to be called Kit-Kats—canvases thirty by twenty-five inches—and many even smaller than that. The heads are placed near the center of the canvases, often so near it that the figure, which was painted in afterward, is cramped as it would not be if the head were higher. There is no effort to diversify the attitudes; and the costumes, while skilfully and sufficiently done, are but accessories to the heads, and there is no attempt tO make them of important pictorial interest. The heads themselves are all painted in a cool, diffused light, seldom relieved by heavy shadows Or dark backgrounds. There is nothing striking, nothing forced; it is only a head—a head with its ordinary lighting and expression. No artifice is used to throw it into undue prominence. Within these limitations (and they are serious ones) they are unsurpassed. No one of his contemporaries had a surer feeling for the construction of a head or a surer insight into character. There are contradictory reports of his industry Or indolence in studying drawing; but whether by industry or nature, he possessed it thoroughly, as far as the human features were concerned.

Where he acquired his technique as a painter is even more mysterious. It seems to have been original with him. He could have got little teaching from Cosmo Alexander in Newport or in his erratic life before meeting West. . . . Exactly what the influence of his stay in West's studio was is difficult to determine; the obvious effects to be looked for he seems to have completely escaped. He got no taste for imitating the old masters, nor any liking for allegOry, nor any skill in cOmposition or in the handling of large canvases. Dunlap recognized their "difference of opinion and style," and in connection with it mentions the following circumstance which took place about 1786 on the occasion of a visit to his old master's house and gallery in Newman Street: "Trumbull was painting on a portrait, and the writer literally lending him a hand by sitting for it. Stuart came in, and his opinion was asked as to the coloring, which he gave very much in these words: `Pretty well, pretty well, but more like our master's flesh than nature's. When Benny teaches the boys, he says, "yellow and white there," and he makes a streak; "red and white there," another streak; "brown and red there for a warm shadow," another streak; "red and yellow there," another streak. But nature does not color in streaks. Look at my hand, see how the colors are mottled and mingled, yet all is clear as silver.'"

No better description of his own style can be given. He paints with an unequaled purity and freshness Of color, very delicate and sure in the half-tones, varying his cOlor to suit the individual, but with a pearly brightness which is characteristic. The paint is put on thinly, as a rule, in short, decided touches without heavy impasto," mingled and mottled," as he himself says, and his execution was surprisingly sure. Two or three sittings sufficed for a head, which he painted at once in its true colors, distributing the paint as little as possible after it was on the canvas, and withOut resorting to the glazings and varnishings so much in vogue in England. This sureness of touch was the more remarkable because even in his yOuth Stuart's hand was trembling and unsteady; and in his later years, when some of his best work was done, an eye-witness says that "his hand shook so that it seemed impossible that he could paint. The last time I saw him I think he was painting the portrait of Josiah Quincy (in 5824). Stuart stOod with his wrist upOn the rest, his hand vibrating, and, when it became tolerably steady, with a sudden dash of the brush he put the color on the canvas."

The brilliancy and preservation of his works today attest the soundness of his practice. He painted with a restricted palette which the curious may find in Dunlap and Mason, with his method of setting it; but let them not hope to produce the same results. Stuart's style was his own. He did not learn it from others, and though he gave advice freely and generously, he could not teach it to any successor.

ARTHUR DEXTER FROM 'THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON'

CHARMED by his powers of conversation, yielding to his wonderful faculty of entering into the train of others' thoughts, each sitter wore his own characteristic expression while in Stuart's chair; and the finished portrait often revealed habits of thought and feeling known only to intimate friends. No artist ever surpassed, perhaps none ever equaled him in this faculty. "He seemed," in the words of Allston, "to dive into the thoughts Of men, for they were made to rise and speak on the surface." Even in his more careless works this quality is hardly ever absent. Like Copley, Stuart painted the best people of his day; but his portraits are so much more individual, each man's idiosyncrasies are so brought out, that the last generation lives for us with a vitality unapproached by the earlier artist.

As a colorist Stuart stands very high if judged by the best of his work. This was very unequal; and he painted some pictures which were hard and even absolutely bad in colOr. His best were superb—the flesh brilliant and transparent in the lights, mellow and still flesh-like in the shadows. The balance of light and shade is excellent, avoiding the dangerous extremes which he himself pointed out in the words: "Where there is too much light there will be no flesh in the shadows; where too little, not enough flesh in the lights." As compositions his works are of little value. Caring for nothing but the face and head, and for them as the handwriting of the mind, he slighted all the rest.

One of his maxims runs thus: "Keep your tints as separate as you can; no blending; it is destructive to clear and beautiful effect; it takes off transparency and brightness of color and renders flesh of the consistency of buckskin." He did not always observe his own rule; but when he did his heads are marvelous examples of handling. The flesh glows. At the proper distance the tints melt into each other with a pure richness which has never been surpassed in flesh-painting. Looked at more closely, they are models for an artist in knowledge and certainty of aim and the production of effects by the fewest touches and simplest means.

WILLIAM HOWE DOWNES 'ATLANTIC MONTHLY' 1888

RANK and hearty, like himself, Stuart's portraits are full of robust character. For the purity of their color and- the freshness and transparency of their flesh-tints his heads will be always remarkable. He never spoiled them by over-elaboration, for he knew when to leave them. "Let nature tell in every part of your painting;"was one of his counsels to young artists; " be ever jealous about truth in painting." He forbade his pupils to blend their colors, and the admirable condition of his own works to-day proves that he practised what he preached in this regard.

Stuart was in- some respects more modern than his time, and undoubtedly partook of the tendencies and aims which distinguish the intelligent realists of the present period. He had the happy faculty of suggesting much by a slight touch, and did only what he could do well. He cared more for nature than for art, was a keen reader of character, and understood how to charm and draw out his sitters in conversation. His paintings look easy when compared with others, and they were in fact executed rapidly. He did not pay much attention to what came before him in art, but he had the great advantage of living in England during the golden age of painting in that country, and of associating with such men as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sir Thomas Lawrence, West, Sir Henry Raeburn, and the others who were the glory of British art.

JANE STUART FROM 'MASON'S LIFE OF -STUART'

I AM frequently asked by young artists to give them some account of my father's method of painting; this I am quite willing to do, so far as my early recollection will permit; but I have not the presumption to attempt to explain his wonderful effects, which were peculiar to himself; nor do I believe they could be transmitted.

The impression I have received from a study of Stuart's heads is that his success was due in a great measure to his wonderful perceptive faculties. As he was quick to read the character of a sitter, so had he a clear insight into the color of his complexion, and never was he known to fail in this particular.

He commenced a portrait by drawing the head and features, and then he sketched in the general tone of the complexion; for this he seldom required more than four or five sittings, and frequently it was done in three sittings. The picture was never touched except when the sitter was in the chair. At the second sitting he introduced transparent flesh-tints, at the third he began to awaken it into life and give it expression, and then the individuality of the sitter came out. This was always done quickly. In the portraits of men advanced in life, where the roundness of youth is gone, we can almost fancy that he has given motion to the features. . .

It has been said by some critics that his coloring was too strong—that there was too great a preponderance of carnation in his flesh-tints; to this I cannot subscribe. Stuart did not rely on or require strong colors to produce his effects, for he had the faculty of bringing out his heads simply by the use of middle tints and tones, giving all the required rotundity and relief without the assistance of black shadows and heavy backgrounds; and yet the faces so painted are full of character and expression. In his work there is nO appearance of labor, but everything that he did showed force and energy—so long as he kept to the head. When that was completed his enthusiasm seems to have abated. With some notable exceptions, the other parts of his pictures were painted but indifferently; but if he particularly fancied the subject, or the sitter was one in whom he took more than his usual interest, he worked with the greatest care to the end. In his draperies he was exceedingly careless, but he amused himself at times by painting lace, showing with a few bold touches of his pencil how easy it is to produce an effect when one understands what he is about. But if any one of his intimate friends took him to task for carelessness in rubbing in the accessories in a portrait, he at once replied, "I copy the works of God, and leave clothes to tailors and mantua-makers."

Color was one of Stuart's strong points, and on this subject he was as eloquent in conversation as he was successful with his brush when he wished to illustrate it. He seemed to bring out the color of every object that he transferred to his canvas. The story that has been told again and again of West's remarks to his other pupils—"It is of nO use to steal Stuart's colors: if you want to paint as he does you must steal his eyes"—will bear repeating in this connection. And this reminds me that many artists, puzzled in their efforts to prOduce like effects, have imagined that he had some secret connected with the management of his colors; but this, I beg to say, was not the case.

Stuart's arrangement of his palette, so far from being complicated, was simplicity itself. He had, of course, the primaries, and from these he formed a chromatic scale of tints, varying them to suit the major or minor tones of his sitter's complexion. These tints were kept separate and distinct, as is apparent in his pictures, the artist trusting to time to mellow them and blend them into a whole. Where he used opposing tints he did it with judgment, and those who look upon his pictures are often astOnished at his skill in bringing them together so successfully. His tints were put on at once, and not worked up, and it is this that makes it so difficult to copy his pictures; for the moment the copyist hesitates he becomes confused, and then he is almost sure to go wrong. . . .

I believe Stuart thought it impossible for one to be an artist without acquiring a thOrough knowledge of drawing and anatomy, and he certainly gave a great deal of time to these studies in earlier years. Whatever information he acquired in his studies was at the disposal of others, and he never withheld anything from any member of the profession who sought his aid and advice in a proper manner; but he had a horror of anything that approached the affectation of a dilettante, or the pedantry of technical phraseology. His own views were singularly clear and to the point, and he imparted information in a way that left no doubt of his meaning on the mind of the hearer.

CHARLES HENRY HART 'BROWERE'S LIFE MASKS OF GREAT AMERICANS'

THAT Stuart was a master in the art of pOrtrait-painting it needs no argument to prove; his works are the only evidence needed, and they establish it beyond appeal. In his portraits the men and women of the past live again. Each individual is here, and it was Stuart's ability to portray the individual that was his greatest power. Each face looks at you and fain would speak, while the brilliant and animated coloring makes one forgetful of the past. . . .

Stuart had two distinct artistic periods. His English work shows plainly the influence of his English contemporaries, and might easily be mistaken, as it has been, for the best work of Romney or of Gainsborough. But his American work, almost the very first he did after his return to his native soil, pro-claims aloud the virility and robustness of his independence. The rich, juicy coloring so marked in his fine portraits painted here, replaces the tender pearly grays so predominant in his pictures painted there. The delicate precision of his early brush gives way to the masterful freedom of his later one. His English portraits might have been limned by Romney or by Gainsborough, but his American ones could have been painted only by Gilbert Stuart.