From boyhood, Washington had struggled to master and conceal his deep emotions. Stranger to spontaneity, Gilbert Stuart met his match. In the taciturn George Washington, a man of granite self-control and a He would disarm them with a steady stream of personal anecdotes and irreverent wit, hoping that this glib patter would coax them into self-revelation. Introduction from Jay to President Washington that would unlock the doors of the executive residence in Philadelphia, then the temporary capital.Īs a portraitist, the garrulous Stuart had perfected a technique to penetrate his subjects’ defenses. Shortly afterward Stuart had in hand the treasured letter of He stalked Washington’s trusted friend Chief Justice John Jay and rendered a brilliant portrait of him, seated in the full majesty of his judicial robes. Once installed in New York, Stuart mapped out a path to Washington with the thoroughness of a military campaign. This harried, disheveled man was scarcely the sort to appeal to the immaculately formal George Washington. and if I should be fortunate, I will repay my English and Irish creditors.” In a self-portrait daubed years earlier, Stuart presented himself as a restless soul, with tousled reddish-brown hair, keen blue eyes, a strongly marked nose, and a pugnacious chin.

I calculate upon making a plurality of his portraits. “There I expect to make a fortune by Washington alone. “When I can net a sum sufficient to take me to America, I shall be off to my native soil,” he confided eagerly to a friend. Overly fond of liquor, prodigal in his spending habits, and with a giant brood of children to support, Stuart had landed in the Marshalsea Prison in Dublin, most likely for debt, just as Washington was being sworn in as first president of the United States in 1789.įor the impulsive, unreliable Stuart, who left a trail of incomplete paintings and irate clients in his wake, George Washington emerged as the savior who would rescue him from insistent creditors. Though born in Rhode Island and reared in Newport, Stuart had escaped to the cosmopolitan charms of London during the war and spent eighteen years producing portraits of British and Irish grandees. In March 1793, Gilbert Stuart crossed the North Atlantic for the express purpose of painting President George Washington, the supreme prize of the age for any ambitious portrait artist. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 12 years old.Įxcerpted from WASHINGTON by Ron Chernow.

Washington book by ron chernow