Gilbert Stuart returned permanently to the United States in 1793, first settling briefly in New York. In 1794 he moved to Philadelphia, where John Vaughan (1756–1842) was among his early patrons and supporters. His name appears among Stuart’s list of thirty-two subscribers for a portrait of George Washington, which he sent to his father Samuel, living in London (George Washington [Vaughan Portrait], 1795, NGA). At the time Stuart painted the Washington portrait for John’s father, he probably painted John. This dashing portrait features the young Vaughan with powdered hair tied back in a bow, its dust falling on the back of his blue coat with brown velvet collar and brass buttons. Stuart provides the illusion of an oval placed in front of the sitter, who stands before a lushly painted reddish-black background, the darker areas surrounding the sitter’s head. The unmodulated reds of the background border the sitter’s brilliant white stock, testimony to Stuart’s keen use of dramatic color and light. As in all great Stuart portraits, the swift and short brushstrokes lend a note of dash and spontaneity, and the warm, carefully modulated flesh tones suggest an astonishing lifelikeness.

Vaughan’s long life and career epitomize the Enlightenment ideals in federal America of human progress and development. He avidly supported the arts and sciences, largely through his association with the American Philosophical Society, for which he served as treasurer and librarian, in the latter capacity for over forty years. He was a successful merchant, specializing in importing French wine, a prominent Unitarian, and an advocate of good citizenry in Philadelphia. Jared Sparks, president of Harvard, described him as a “cicerone and friend to all the strangers who visit the city, occasional preacher in the Unitarian Church and parish minister to all the poor of that Society. . .recommender general of all schoolmasters, inventors, young men just entering their professions, and every sort of personage, whose characters are good, and who can be benefited by his aid.”

Related examples: Two portraits of John Vaughan painted by Thomas Sully, one signed and dated 1823, American Philosophical Society; another version of 1823, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine.

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.