1755-1828 Gilbert Stuart was born in North Kingston, R.I., on Dec. 3, 1755. At the age of 13 or 14 he studied art with the Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander in Newport. With Alexander he made a tour of the South and a journey to Edinburgh, where Alexander died in 1772. For about a year Stuart remained, poverty-stricken, in Scotland, but finally, working as a sailor, he managed to get back to America. There he executed a few portraits in a hard limner fashion. With the Revolutionary War threatening, his family, who had Tory sympathies, fled to Nova Scotia, and Stuart sailed for London, where he remained from 1775 to 1787. For the first 4 or 5 years, Stuart served as the first assistant of American expatriate painter Benjamin West, who had rescued him from poverty. From the first, Stuart showed an interest only in portraiture and had no desire to go into the branch of history painting West practiced. After his apprenticeship, Stuart became London's leading portrait painter, next to Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, whose style he emulated, as in a rare full-length portrait of William Grant of Congalton as The Skater (ca. 1782). For a while Stuart lived in splendor, but being a bad businessman and a profligate spender, he was in constant debt. He lived in Ireland from 1787 to 1792 and then returned to America to make a fortune,  Related Paintings of Gilbert Stuart :. | The Skater, | Der Schlittschuhlaufer | WashingtonAtDorchesterHeightsByStuart | Thomas Jefferson | the skater |
Related Artists:
James Hamilton
Irish-born American Painter, 1819-1878, American painter of Irish birth. He emigrated to the USA and at the age of 15 arrived in Philadelphia, where he was encouraged to study art by the engraver John Sartain (1808-97). Hamilton had drawing lessons with local teachers and studied from English artists' manuals including that on oil painting by Samuel Prout; he was also influenced by the English watercolour technique of broad transparent washes. With these stylistic interests and his innate sensitivity to nature,
jean metzinger
Jean Metzinger (June 24, 1883 Nantes, France?C November 3, 1956) was a French painter. Initially he was influenced by Fauvism and Impressionism, but from 1908 he was associated with Cubism. Metzinger was a member of the Section d'Or group of artists. Certain pieces such as At the Cycle-Race track suggest speed and movement, ideas which are linked to the futurist movement. Together with Albert Gleizes, Metzinger created the first major treatise on Cubism, Du Cubisme, in 1912. In the latter stages of his career, he moved away from cubism towards realism, while still retaining elements of cubist style.
John Charlton
1849-1917