Rhode Island-born Gilbert Stuart rose to great prominence as a portraitist of post- Revolutionary America and image maker of its first president, George Washington. As a youth, Stuart learned the principles of painting from the Scottish artist Cosmo Alexander (1724–1772) and followed him to Edinburgh in 1771 to work in his studio. After Alexander died a year later, Stuart returned home briefly before embarking on a twelve-year sojourn in London, studying with Benjamin West (see B.67.25 and B.67.26) for many years before setting up his own studio in 1781. He quickly became one of the premier portraitists of London. At the height of his power and fame in London, Stuart found his personal finances in disarray and traveled to Dublin both to avoid London creditors and to respond to his Irish patron, Charles Manners, duke of Rutland. In 1787, a notice appeared in the London newspapers: “Mr. Stewart [sic] the portrait-painter, is not gone to France, but to Ireland; when it is probable that he will embark for America:—where it is hoped his merit will find an asylum, preferable to what he experienced in England.” In Dublin, Stuart began painting prominent political figures, Irish personalities, and the gentry. The portrait of Robert Livingston (b. 1733),  one of the many Irish sitters Stuart painted in his five-year stay in Dublin, is typical of the artist’s style: the sitter’s intense, engaging expression, loose, fluid brushwork, rich color, and bravura handling of the whites of the sitter’s costume, here displayed in the starched ruffles of his shirt.

Related examples: Similar Dublin portraits by Stuart in the oval format include Luke White, c. 1787, NGA; John Richardson, c. 1788, in Park 1926, pp. 645–46, no. 707; and Reverend William Preston, c. 1788, in Park 1926, p. 624, no. 679.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.