Gilber Stuart
A. Gilbert Stuart, one of the new world’s first great artists, was born in North Kingstown Rhode Island in 1755; he grew up in nearby Newport studying painting.
B. Not many people realize that the picture of George Washington on the one dollar bill is actually a masterpiece in realism art called The Athenaeum Portrait which created a legacy for a talented artist of America’s early national period.
C. Within the painting, The Athenaeum Portrait we see Stuart reveal not only gifted talent but expert technique controlled by his peculiar and pleasing take on contemporary British portraiture. This portrait is a great representation of its time period, strong, talented and unexplainable just as our country during this time.
D. American portrait painter Gilbert Stuart was born a native to Rhode Island. Gilbert grew up in Newport where he studied painting before shortly going to Edinburgh in the early 1770’s, then London in 1775. Gilbert entered the studio of the emigrant American artist Benjamin West, with whom he worked for about six years. His mature style owes more, however, to the work of Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds than to West.
E. His painting The Athenaeum Portrait was an incredible masterpiece. It is as Stuart stated, he never meant to complete the portrait. He kept it for years in his studio, on view as his masterpiece from which he could take copies to sell. Unquestionably he had a special fear of completing the painting without his initial inspiration and, perhaps more importantly, without a reawakening of his own, precise emotional state at the time.
F. Throughout Gilbert’s life he suffered from manic depression, always in a destructive state. His bipolar ways greatly affected the artists work and good and bad ways. In The Athenaeum Portrait however his illness helped inspire and create one of the countries earliest masterpieces.
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