A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. I’d say, sometimes more, depending on the picture.
They can come to us in many ways, those images. But for a long time in history, we relied on paintings. Photography didn’t come into the mix until the early 1800s, and even then, it wasn’t so great. But paintings have been around since the caves of man and the wooly mammoths.
Here, in the United States, in the early shaping of us, one of the best-known painters was a man named Gilbert Stuart. We all know him for sure, as we’ve seen his work. He painted the portrait of George Washington, the one that was never completed. Martha Washington commissioned the painting. She wanted him to do portraits of husband and wife separately. Then she planned on hanging them together, somewhere in their Mount Vernon home. Unfortunately, George died during the course of the painting, and it was never finished. Gilbert never even started on Martha’s.
Regardless, he was a portrait painter of magnitude back then. Stuart produced portraits of more than 1,000 people, including the first six Presidents. That’s Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams. His good works can be found today at art museums throughout the United States and around the world.
Today is his birthday. He was born December 3, 1755, in Rhode Island, a little place called Saunderstown. From the very early goings of his life, he showed promise as an artist. It seems to me, a lot of budding artists back in those times managed to make an acquaintance of someone famous and find a place under that proverbial wing. Such was the case with little Gilbert Stuart. He met a Scottish painter named Cosmo Alexander, who took Gilbert to Scotland at the young age of sixteen to study painting.
Now. If I am this kid’s parents? I’d be saying, whoooaaa Nellie. I’m not letting my little Gilbert sail across the Atlantic with some huckster named Cosmo. But Mr. and Mrs. Stuart let him go. Well, it didn’t matter much. Cosmo died about a year later, and young Gilbert was high and dry. He couldn’t make his way in Scotland, so he went back home in 1773.
But then the American Revolution took hold. And guess who was a Loyalist? Yes. Gilbert Stuart. He got back on the boat. Sailing, sailing, this time to England. And that’s when he hit his big break. He made a painting called, “The Skater, a portrait of William Grant.” It is really pretty amazing, and with this one full-length portrait, he was thrust into fame.
All accounts of his life say that he wasn’t so great with his money. My guess is, he had some sort of “thing” on the side. Gambling, drinking, doll collecting, who knows. At any rate, he was making ungodly commissions, but at the same time, barely escaping debtor’s prison.
So, in 1793, he left Europe again. He returned to the United States with one solitary goal in mind. He wanted to paint a portrait of George Washington, have an engraver reproduce it — to provide for his family by the sale of the engravings.
He found his way to George and many others. As I mentioned earlier, he went on to be one of the most iconic portrait painters in U.S. history.
Remember that unfinished portrait of George? It is called The Athenaeum. It is on the one-dollar bill. Stuart painted about 75 reproductions of The Athenaeum. Always unfinished. He kept the original version and sold his reproductions for a price of $100 each, but the original portrait was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1828.
Oh, the time of his death. He never learned to hold onto money. Stuart left his family deeply in debt, and his wife and daughters were unable to purchase a gravesite. They buried him in an unmarked grave. It would take ten years for his family to recover financially, and when they did, they planned on a proper burial for Stuart. Apparently, though, they had poor memories. They could not find the exact location of his grave, and Gilbert Stuart was never moved.
I’m not sure if one picture, worth a thousand words, could have told his story.
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“If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”
― Edward Hopper
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“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”
― Pablo Picasso
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“Lets build a happy little cloud.
Lets build some happy little trees.”
― Bob Ross
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