Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Joseph Siffred Duplessis and the Founding Fathers of the USA
We will celebrate this year on July 4th the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Portraits of our nation’s founding fathers, painted by master artists, remind us of the beginnings of our country. The term Founding Fathers was introduced by Warren G. Harding, keynote speaker at the 1916 Republican National Convention. He used the term again at his inauguration as US President on March 4, 1921. Colonial American historian Richard B. Morris (1904-1989) identified the seven Founding Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. Their portraits are part of the collection of the National Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
The portrait of John Jay was painted by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). Stuart was born in the Rhode Island Colony. His talent was noticed, and he was tutored by Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander (1724-1772), a Jacobite who was visiting the US. Alexander returned in 1771 to Scotland, taking Stuart with him. Stuart, a patriot, returned to the US, but he left for England in 1775. He became a student of American artist Benjamin West, also in England. By 1777, his work at the Royal Academy was successful, and he became a member of the Royal Academy in 1782. Stuart returned to the United States in 1793. His intent was to paint George Washington.
Stewart knew John Jay from his time in London, and reconnected with Jay in New York in 1793 on his return from Europe. John Jay was Chief Justice of the United States when the painting John Jay (1794) (52”x40”) was made. Jay had to return to England. Stuart had time to paint Jay’s head only. Jay had asked Stuart to paint him in the robes he wore when he received an honorary degree from Harvard. Jay’s nephew wore the robes so that Stuart could complete the portrait.
Stewart had studied the Dutch masters including Rembrandt and the British portrait artists Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. The Jay portrait is an early work, and it was painted in the “Grand Manner” of the Academy. Stuart included a red drapery hanging behind Jay, and a classical column. As he continued to paint portraits in America, he revised his style: “For my own part, I will not follow any master. I wish to find out what nature is for myself, and see her with my own eyes. This appears to me the true road to excellence.”
Stuart was commissioned in 1817 by Colonel George Gibbs of Newport, Rhode Island, to paint five portraits: Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Monroe. The first four are of the Founding Fathers. They are duplicates painted by Stuart of his earlier portraits of the sitters. Gibbs’s collection of the Founding Fathers was sold to the National Gallery of Art in 1979.
Gibbs was a notable mineralogist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Having spent time in China and Europe studying minerals, he returned to the US with a collection of 20,000 mineral samples. The collection was purchased in 1825 by Yale University.
Gilbert Stuart would paint over 1000 oil portraits of prominent Americans, including the first six presidents. George Washington was his most popular subject. He painted three portraits of Washington from life, and at least 100 copies. Leery of artists’ motives, Washington had to be persuaded by friends and relatives to sit for a portrait. One such friend was John Jay who wrote Stuart a letter of introduction. Stuart first painted Washington in 1795 while the President was in his second term of office. George Washington (1817-21) (NGA) is one of the last copies Stuart made of Washington, who had given Stuart permission to copy his portraits.
Stuart’s daughter Jane (1812-1888) wrote, “At the time of Washington’s sittings in Philadelphia, my father told Lee (Henry Light-Horse Harry Lee) that Washington had a tremendous temper, but held it under wonderful control.”
Thomas Jefferson, was thirty-three years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He first sat for Stuart in 1800. He was waiting still for his portrait in 1819. Jefferson wrote in a letter to a friend, “With respect to Mr. Stuart, it was in May 1800, I got him to draw my picture, and immediately after the last sitting I paid him his price. He was yet to put the last hand to it, so it was left with him. When he came to Washington in 1805, he told me he was not satisfied with it, and therefore begged me to sit again, and he drew another which he was to deliver me instead of the first, but begged permission to keep it until he could get an engraving from it.”
The portrait Thomas Jefferson (1817-1821) (26”x22’’) in the National Gallery is another of Stuart’s copies made to fulfill an obligation. He was an exceptionally busy artist with definite ideas of what he wanted his paintings to reveal. Although the poses of many of his portraits are similar, according to his daughter Jane, “He prided himself on being able to detect a sitter’s character and temperament from examination of his features.”
John Adams, advocate for independence and second President of the US, and his wife Abigail, sat for Stuart for portraits in 1800. The National Gallery has the 1800 portrait as well as this later portrait of Adams (1817-1821) (26”x22”). About the sitting in 1800, Adams observed, “Speaking generally, no penance is like having one’s picture done. You must sit in a constrained and unnatural position, which is a trial to the temper. But I should like to sit to Stuart from the first of January to the last of December, for he lets me do just what I please, and keeps me constantly amused by his conversation.” Stuart’s sitters generally found him to be good company. The Adams family was, however, frustrated by Stuart’s procrastination. Painted in 1800, the work was not delivered to the Adamses until 1815.
James Madison (1817-21) (26”x21’’) and the portrait of Thomas Jefferson are duplicates. Stuart made fewer copies of Madison and Jefferson, and he called them “his one-hundred-dollar-bills,” the price he charged for head and shoulder portraits. Stuart first painted James and Dolley Madison in Washington in 1803. He moved his studio to Washington when it became the US capital. Madison was Secretary of State under Jefferson, and he was involved with the Louisiana Purchase. The Madisons were among the earliest of Stuart’s portraits in Washington, DC. One of Dolley’s friends said, “Stuart is all the rage, he is almost worked to death, and everybody afraid that they will be the last to be finished.” Dolley wrote to her sister, “Stuart has taken an admirable picture of Mr. Madison—his & mine are finished.” Dolley Madison’s matching portrait is in the National Gallery of Art. She described Stuart, “He is a man of genius, and therefore does everything differently from other people—He travels to the Southward on his way Northward.”
Dolley Madison has another connection to Gilbert Stuart. She described to her sister the time during the War of 1812, when the British set fire to the White House on August 23, 1814, when she saved Stuart’s portrait of George Washington: “I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found to be too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out; it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping. And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it…”
Alexander Hamilton (1806) (31”x24”) was painted by John Trumbull (1756-1843). This posthumous portrait was commissioned by Senator George Cabot. Trumbull, a veteran, is best known for his paintings of events in the American Revolution. He turned to art after the War and traveled to London, where he studied under Benjamin West. Like Stuart, Trumbell was commissioned to paint portraits including several of Hamilton, but his best-known works were historical subjects such as Declaration of Independence (1819) that hangs in the Capitol. Alexander Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury. He was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr on July 12, 1804. Trumbull based the 1806 portrait on a full-figure portrait of Hamilton that he painted in 1791, commissioned by a committee of five New York Merchants to honor Hamilton. Trumbull’s 1792 portrait of Hamilton was used on the face of the ten-dollar-bill. Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence was used on the reverse side of the two-dollar bill.
Benjamin Franklin went to Paris in 1776 to solicit aid from the French for the American cause. He already was well-known and respected. Madame Brillon de Jouy wrote to him mentioning his “sound moral teaching and lively imagination.” She described his “droll roguishness” to be “most endearing.” Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, Franklin’s host in Paris, commissioned Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725-1802), Louis XVI’s portrait painter, to paint a portrait of Franklin. Duplessis had created the pastel Benjamin Franklin (1779) (29”x24”) that is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Duplessis duplicated the pastel in oil, and the piece now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Franklin did not sit for many portraits, but he was not averse to having the images duplicated. Duplessis and his studio produced several based on the pastel.
In Paris, Franklin chose to wear plain clothes, a bit wrinkled, and no powdered wig or hair. A portrait made in London in 1767 depicts him dressed in a blue silk suit with gold braid and buttons, lace cuffs on his shirt, and a well-styled powdered wig. Franklin was a shrewd judge of people, and his choice not to adopt the elaborate French style was a decision that worked well for his mission. The depiction of Franklin’s face in the Duplessis pastel was used by the United States Treasury for the $100 bill.
