Gilbert Stuart [antikvár]

Preface A mono the many artists that America has produced, Gilbert Stuart must rank among those in the top echelon. Though he limited himself to the traditional field of portraiture, a category of art that seems today as obsolete as tiewigs and three-cornered hats, he enriched and enlarged it by his practice. No one knows how many pictures he painted, but the number of those that are known bulks amazingly large. Yet their artistic quality remains high, and their human quality, perhaps even higher. He lived, as do we all, in a period of change. The better to understand his accomplishment, both artistically and personally, I have tried to suggest something of the world in which he lived and worked, and of his often markedly idiosyncratic reactions to that world. He himself savored personality, and I hope that, knowing him a little more as a person rather than merely as a painter of icons who lived long ago, others may savor his complex personality as I have come to do in writing of him. In any event, the record is there—the many portraits painted over a long, productive life. If it accomplishes nothing more, I hope that this book will present to the latter-day reader a kind of visual who's who of a vital period, seen through the likenesses of those who lived in it and, often, profoundly influenced its course—and, thereby, the course of our lives even today—as observed and recorded through a personality as vivid as that of any of his many sitters. Except for the file in the Frick Art Reference Library, which is periodically updated, the latest attempt to list Stuart's complete works appears in Mount's biography of 1964. Understandably, many lost or unrecorded pictures have come to light—and many others have changed hands—since its compilation. Any such essay as this must rest on the foundation of the contributions of previous workers in the field, and, as always, there are certain key sources. Because of the lack of personal documents—since Stuart wrote few letters and almost everything else seems to have burned in the fire that consumed Jane Stuart's studio many years after her father's death—the paintings themselves remain the primary source. But there are also the accounts of Dunlap and Water-house, Jane's articles in Scribner's, Dowling's Irish reminiscences, and a few others that all of us who study Stuart have, of necessity, used extensively. Mason, Park, Morgan, Whidey, Flexner, and Mount have all made vitally important contributions, both in Interpretation and in presenung additional material. All of these and more are listed in the brief Bibliography at the end of the book, and I hereby acknowledge my debt to them with pleasure and appreciation.