GILBERT CHARLES STUART.

In this biographical sketch of the life and character of GILBERT C. STUART, we shall avail ourselves of the very valuable information afforded us by the late venerable Dr. Benj. Waterhouse, of Cambridge, the companion of his childhood and his youth, and the undeviating friend of his manhood and age; and of such other sources of information as are offered to us. Although our greatest portrait painter died but in 1828, already the place of his nativity is disputed, and contending towns claim the honor of producing this extraordinary genius; to Dr. Waterhouse we owe certainty on this head; and even the time of his birth would not have been accurately determined, but that the painter has inscribed "G. Stuart, Pictor, se ipso pinxit, A. D. 1778, Etatis sua 24," on a portrait painted by himself and presented to his friend, which remains a monument of his early skill, and is the more precious as it is the only portrait he ever painted of himself. This, of course, gives us the year of his birth, 1754.

Between the years 1746 and 1750, there came over from Great Britain to these English colonies a number of Scotch gentlemen, who had not the appearance of what is generally understood by the term emigrants, nor yet merchants or gentlemen of fortune. They came not in companies, but dropped in quietly, one after another. Their unassuming appearance and retired habits, bordering on the reserve, seemed to place them above the common class of British travellers. Their mode of life was snug, discreet, and respectable, yet clannish. Some settled in Philadelphia, some in Perth Amboy, some in New York; but a greater proportion sat down at that pleasant and healthy spot, Rhode Island, called by its first historiographer, Callender," the Garden of America." Several of the emigrants were professional men; among these was Dr. Thomas Moffat, a learned physician of the Boerhaavean school; but, however learned, his dress and manners were so ill suited to the plainness of the inhabitants of Rhode Island, who were principally Quakers, that he

could not make his way among them as a practitioner, and therefore he looked round for some other mode of genteel subsistence; and he hit upon that of cultivating tobacco and making snuff, to supply the place of the great quantity that was every year imported from Glasgow; but he could find no man in the country who he thought was able to make him a snuff mill. He therefore wrote to Scotland, and obtained a competent mill-wright, by the name of Gilbert Stuart.

Dr. Moffat selected for his mill seat a proper stream in that part of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence plantations which bore and still bears the Indian name of Narraganset, once occupied by the warlike tribe of the Pequot Indians, made familiar to us by the intensely interesting romance of our novelist, James Fenimore Cooper, under the title of the "Last of the Mohicans."

There, Gilbert Stuart, the father of the great painter, erected the first snuff mill in New England, and there he manufactured that strange article of luxury. He soon after built a house, and married a very handsome woman, daughter of a Mr. Anthony, a substantial farmer; and of this happy couple, at Narraganset, was born GILBERT CHARLES STUART; So christened, but the middle name, which betokens the jacobite principles of his father, was early dropped by the son, and never used in his days of notoriety; indeed, but for the signatures of letters addressed to his friend Waterhouse in youth, we should have no evidence that he ever bore more than the famous name of GILBERT STUart.

He is described to us by one of his school fellows as "a very capable, self-willed boy; handsome, forward, an only son, and habituated at home to have his own way in every thing, with little or no control of the easy, good natured father." He was about thirteen years old when he began to copy pictures, and at length attempted likenesses in black lead. There came to Newport about the year 1772, a Scotch gentleman named Cosmo Alexander; he was between fifty and sixty years of age, of delicate health, and prepossessing manners, apparently independent of the profession of painting, which ostensibly was his occupation, though it is believed that he, and several other gentlemen of leisure and observation from Britain, were travelling in this country for political purposes. From Mr. Alexander, young STUART first received lessons in the grammar of the art of painting, and after the summer spent in Rhode Island, he accompanied him to the South, and afterwards to Scotland. Mr Alexander died not long after his arrival in Edinburgh, leaving his

pupil to the care of Sir George Chambers, who did not long survive him. Into whose hands our young artist fell after these disappointments, we know not, nor is it to be regretted, for the treatment he received was harsh, such as neither GILBERT STUART or his father ever mentioned. The young man returned to Newport, and after a time resumed his pencil.

Mr. Joseph Anthony, of Philadelphia, visited his sister, the mother of the painter, soon after GILBERT's return, and on going into his painting room, was surprised to find a striking likeness of his mother, Mrs. Anthony, the grandmother of the painter, who, although he had not seen her since he was twelve years of age, for he was no older at the time of her death, had, by the power of recollection, aided by kindred attachment, produced the likeness which now attracted the attention and gained the favor of his uncle. This faculty of preserving the images of those once known was one of the characteristics of STUART's genius.

Mr. Anthony, his family, and friends, sat for portraits to the young artist, who was now in the full tide of prosperity. About this time, the winter of 1773-4, he and his friend Waterhouse were fellow students in an academy for drawing, of their own formation. They hired a strong-muscled journeyman blacksmith, as their academy figure, at half a dollar the evening; and thus, probably, anticipated any other academical study from the naked figure in their country by many years.

Ardent as STUART's love of painting was, we have Dr. Waterhouse's authority for saying, that music divided his affections so equally with her sister, that it was difficult to say which was "the ruling passion." In the beginning of March, 1775, STUART's friend, Waterhouse, embarked for London, with the intention of pursuing his medical studies in the schools of Europe, and the young painter, probably finding his business interrupted by the approach of war, found means to follow, relying, as it would seem, upon the resources of his friend, for an introduction to the treasures of the British metropolis. He arrived in London in the latter end of November, when he found that Waterhouse had gone to Edinburgh, and he had not one acquaintance in this strange world, and no resource but his pencil and a letter to a Scotch gentleman, who received him kindly, and employed him to paint a picture for him, which, when his friend Waterhouse returned to London, in the summer of 1776, he found still unfinished on his easel.

During this period, when his father's business was broke up by

the events of the war in America, and the young painter was left to shift for himself, without experience or prudence, his skill in music, both practical and theoretical, stood him in stead, and gave him the means of subsistence in a manner as extraordinary as his character and actions were eccentric. While he was in this state of extreme poverty, without employment or the means of subsistence, walking the streets without any definite purpose, he passed by a church in Foster Lane, saw the door open, and several persons going in. He was attracted by the sound of the organ-he inquired at the door what was going on within, and was told, the vestry were making trial of several candidates for the situation of organist, the last incumbent having recently died. STUART entered the church, and encouraged, as he said, by a look of good nature in the countenance of one of the vestrymen, addressed him, and asked if a stranger might try his skill and become a candidate for the vacant place. His request was granted, and he had the pleasure to find that the time he had employed in making himself a musician, had not been thrown away. His playing was preferred to that of his rivals, and he was engaged at a salary which relieved present necessities, and enabled him to return to his studies as a painter. "When," says Mr. Charles Fraser, "Mr. STUART related this anecdote to me, he was sitting in his parlor, and to prove that he did not neglect the talent that had been so friendly to him in his yonth, and in the days of his adversity, he took his seat at a small organ in the room, and played several tunes with much feeling and execution."

On the return of his friend from Edinburgh, to pursue his studies by "walking the hospitals" in London, he had the pleasure of procuring several sitters for the young painter; but he could with difficulty keep him in that straight course which is so necessary to permanent prosperity.

Strange as it may appear, STUART was a long time in London without seeing, or being introduced to his great countryman, West. There appears to be no reason for this omission, and for not gaining access, for at least two years, to that source of instruction which was ever open to,those who thirsted for knowledge, and more especially to Americans. At length, Dr. Waterhouse says, "After I had exhausted all my means of helping forward my ingenious friend and Countryman, I called upon Mr. West, and laid open to him his situation." The consequence was, an invitation from Mr. West, and his continued friendship, support, and instruction.

Soon after this, STUART's friend, Waterhouse, went to Leyden, to

finish his studies, and they did not meet again until the painter removed from Washington to Boston; for the intermediate time, we have to look to other authorities, and one of the first is Colonel Trumbull, who on being introduced to Mr. West, in August, 1780, found STUART as his pupil., Mr. STUART uniformly said, that on application to Mr. West he was received with great benevolence; that nothing could exceed the attention of that distinguished artist to him, and when he saw that he was fitted for the field,-armed to contend with the best and the highest,-he advised him to commence his career professionally. While under Mr. West's roof, he became known to celebrated artists, and to the lords of the land. Dance admired and encouraged him, and presented his palette to him. His full length of Mr. Grant, skating, attracted great applause, and he, soon after taking rooms and setting up an independent easel, had his full share of the best business in London as a portrait painter; and as Colonel Trumbull has said, had prices equal to any, except Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough. It is the opinion of STUART'S contemporaries in London, that with common prudence he might have been the successor of Reynolds. He was not prudent; and found it convenient to visit Dublin, where he was received with Hibernian hospitality; delighting as much by his wit and conviviality as by his pencil.

In 1793 he returned to America. He embarked from Dublin, and arrived in New York, where he set up his easel, and was thronged with admirers and sitters. To gratify his desire to paint Washington, a desire which, he has said, brought him from the scene of his European success, he visited Philadelphia, and having been fully successful in his mission, he fixed his residence in that city and neighborhood for some years.

An eminent artist has said of STUART's Washington: "And well is his ambition justified in the sublime head he has left us: a nobler personification of wisdom and goodness, reposing in the majesty of a serene conscience, is not to be found on canvass."

The writer of this necessarily short and imperfect sketch, who knew Washington, both as general and president, perfectly coincides with the above tribute of praise from a brother artist. When artists speak of STUART's Washington, let it be remembered, that they mean the original picture, refused by the government of the United States, and purchased as an inestimable gem by the Athenæum, of Boston. The copies generally circulated, and the prints from Heath's workshop, in London, are libels equally on the painter and the hero.