The Painter's Chair

by Hugh Howard

  The deeper nobler aim [of portraiture] is the personification of character.

  —Henry Fuseli, Fuseli’s Lectures, No. IV, 1805

  I.

  Autumn 1794 . . . Letters from home . . . New York to London

  LIKE MORE THAN a few of Gilbert Stuart’s patrons, Sarah Jay grew impatient. “Would you believe that Stuart has not yet sent me your picture?” she wrote to her husband that August.

  John Jay was in London, having left his post as chief justice of the United States to negotiate a treaty with England. (The English harassment of American shipping had become intolerable, and, aided by the dispirited John Trumbull as his secretary, Jay was attempting to avoid another military conflict.) In her husband’s absence Mrs. Jay launched her own negotiations with Mr. Stuart. “I call upon him often,” she wrote to John. “I have not hesitated telling him that it is in his power to contribute infinitely to my gratification, by indulging me with your portrait.” Her persistence seemed to be producing results. “[H]e has at length resumed his pencil . . . and [the portrait] is nearly done and is your very self. It is an inimitable picture and I am all impatient to have it.”1

  Mr. Stuart also wanted something, and he was not bashful about raising the matter in his conversations with Mrs. Jay. “[Stuart] begged me to remind you of the promise you made him the day he breakfasted with you,” she advised her husband. Jay’s connection with President Washington, Stuart knew, could be just the entrée he needed, and a letter of introduction from the chief justice would surely open presidential doors to him. Still, neither Mrs. Jay nor the letter he desired could compel Stuart to complete the portrait posthaste.

  More than two months passed before Mr. Stuart arrived at teatime on November 15, armed with the portrait. Admittedly, Stuart hadn’t quite managed to complete it—part of the expansive red and black academic robe in which Jay was draped remained unpainted—but Stuart promised Mrs. Jay “a better one.”2She was happy enough to have an un-finished version in hand, and, as she wrote to her husband, she soon hung the picture in a place of honor in their dining room. In return, Mr. Stuart got his letter.

  That month Stuart wrote to his uncle, Joseph Anthony, a Philadelphia merchant, confiding his schedule. “I should have been with you before this time had not a smart attack of the fever and Ague prevented me,” he explained, choosing to omit mention of unfulfilled commissions. “The object of my journey,” he concluded, “is only to secure a picture of the President, & finish yours.”3

  With his letter of introduction from Mr. Jay to Washington in hand, Stuart could depart for “the London of America,” as one English visitor described Philadelphia.4

  II.

  Winter 1794–1795 . . . The President’s House . . . 190 Market Street

  BY THE END OF November, Gilbert Stuart’s footfall was heard on the streets of Philadelphia. One of the first calls he made was at the President’s House, just a block from Congress Hall. There he left Mr. Jay’s letter along with his own card.

  He had traveled to Pennsylvania alone. The success of his Philadelphia venture was hardly assured, leading him to decide that, at least for the time being, his family should remain in New York. He spent a day in the nearby countryside, and on his return he found a note awaiting him from Bartholomew Dandridge, Martha Washington’s nephew. Dan-dridge was the president’s secretary, and he had written to invite Mr. Stuart to the President’s House that night. This, thought Stuart, was a good omen.

  As he approached his destination that Friday evening, the red brick structure stood out as one of the grandest mansions in Philadelphia. A double row house built as one, it was forty-five feet wide and contained three full stories plus a garret lit by the two dormers. The large dwelling was home to George, Martha, Nelly, and Wash, and it also housed the offices of the executive branch. On the third floor were offices for clerks; on the second was Washington’s study. From the street Stuart could see little over the tall brick walls that flanked the house, but the narrow lot also contained a long kitchen ell attached to the main block, a brick stable, coach house, washhouse, and ice house. Servants’ rooms accommodated the two dozen members of the house staff, which included indentured servants and several Mount Vernon slaves.5

  When Stuart climbed the three white stone steps to the entrance, he faced a doorway framed in a bold carved frontispiece topped with a triangular pediment. Just above the door he could see streaks of candlelight from within that shone through the fanlight. He heard the bustle of activity inside, and when the door opened, a servant ushered him into a long entrance hall carpeted in green baize. To his left, through a set of arches, stood a towering staircase. He was directed down a long narrow hall and through a tall doorway.

  Robert Morris, the president’s friend, a financier and a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, had leased the house to the city of Philadelphia for the use of the nation’s chief executive. Washington had required certain alterations and additions to adapt the property for his use, and one change—a bow window—was evident when Stuart entered the state dining room. The far end of the space had the shape of a long, gracious curve, punctuated with three windows. In front of one of them a group of gentlemen stood engaged in conversation, while a mix of men and ladies milled around elsewhere in the room.

  Stuart assumed this was an anteroom. Having spent years visiting formal houses in London and Dublin, he expected that guests would be distinguished by their rank, with some proceeding to more exclusive spaces deeper in the house, others not. Unsure of the proper etiquette in this unfamiliar city, he waited for his cue, surveying the crowd of perhaps two dozen guests with whom he stood in the large room, which was twenty-four feet wide, thirty-four long.

  He had yet to engage anyone in conversation when he saw a man detach himself from the circle of gentlemen at the far end of the room. The tall stranger, dressed formally in a black velvet suit, his hair powdered, walked toward the painter. Though he wore no sword, the man carried himself with the erect posture of a soldier. When he reached Stuart’s side, he addressed him by name.

  The president’s directness threw Stuart into a stunned silence. He had expected more elaborate protocol, perhaps that an intermediary would do introductions and there would be a courtly exchange of bows. He was surprised, even embarrassed at the president’s attention, and “so intimidated as to lose, for the moment, all self-possession.”6

  Washington, of course, recognized Stuart’s state of shock. Over the years, the General had met many overawed men and women, people frozen in place and made speechless by the mere sight of him. To put Stuart at ease, “he entered into easy conversation with him until he recovered.”7

  Stuart soon learned that the event that evening was one of Martha’s Drawing Rooms, a casual gathering where guests of a certain station were received without the formality of George’s Tuesday-afternoon Levees (at those the president, wearing yellow gloves, his long sword in its white polished leather scabbard, and carrying a cocked hat with cockade, spent the three o’clock hour receiving gentlemen and engaging them in formal and mannered conversations.8At a Drawing Room, one could expect between the hours of eight and ten to encounter well-dressed women, the powers of Philadelphia society and of the federal government, and to be offered plum cake and tea or coffee in a more relaxed and social atmosphere.

  Washington that day introduced Stuart to some of the members of the company, but the painter’s brief exposure to Washington could not help but change his view of the man. Stuart had met royalty and landed lords, he had visited castles and palaces, he had conversed with the rich and the powerful of the Old World. All of that made his encounter with America’s chief aristocrat seem strange indeed. He had little regard for pretense, hauteur, or the trappings of wealth, but the impact of Washington’s presence wasn’t simple to explain. “[H]is figure was by no means good,” Stuart later observed, “[and] his shoulders . . . high and narrow, and his hands and feet remarkably large.” In fact, thought Stuart dismissively, Washington had “aldermanic
proportions.” Nevertheless, he concluded, despite “all these drawbacks, his appearance was singularly fine.”9

  Now that he met the man in the flesh, he saw how considerable his challenge would be. Somehow he needed to render the intangible qualities of the great man onto a piece of canvas. But Stuart remained fully confident that he was just the man for the job.

  III.

  Winter 1794–1795 . . . The Painter’s Studio . . . Fifth and Chestnut

  STUART SETTLED INTO rooms just a block from the State House. He had sufficient space for his Painting Room, as well as quarters for “Tom,” as he had taken to calling his wife, and their children, all of whom he brought down from New York. It was during that “winter season” that he had his first sitting with Washington.10

  When the president arrived to take his place in the Painter’s Chair, he brought with him the air of a man who had done this very thing too many times before. “It annoyed him exceedingly to sit at all,” his grandson reported. “After every sitting, he was wont to declare this must be the last.”11

  The president had turned sixty-three a few weeks before. When Washington assumed a pose looking left, exposing the right side of his face, Stuart could see that the firm features of a young man had given way to a certain looseness beneath the chin and fleshy jowls. Stuart regarded his sitter from behind his easel, on which he had positioned a standard three-quarter canvas, roughly thirty by twenty-five inches, one that had been prepared in London by the firm of James Poole. It was smaller than the half-lengths he had used for the likes of General Gates and Chief Justice Jay, but its size also meant it could be more efficiently reproduced—and Stuart wanted to be in the business of selling replicas of the president for a tidy profit. First, though, he had to get the likeness right, and the man seemed from the outset something of a conundrum.

  Though a sometime planter, Washington pointedly did not use tobacco. Still, his dignity seemed suspended about him like a wreath of smoke, defending him from Stuart’s penetrating gaze. From long habit, Stuart launched into conversation. He was of the opinion that, by conversing with his subjects, he “could draw out the minds of his sitters upon that surface he was tasked to represent.” As his attempt at conversation fell flat, it seemed to Stuart that “Washington’s mind was busied within.”12

  Stuart used his gift for anecdote in an attempt to divert his sitter, to try to animate his features, to relieve the fixed, masklike aspect. Stuart was a raconteur, a punster, a wit, and a man of varied experience. Many of his noble, wealthy, and educated subjects in years past had found his company engaging. Yet what he sought in talking to them and Washington was more than mere smiles or appreciative laughter.

  Certainly he wanted Washington and the others to relax. He wanted them at their ease, and he wanted Washington’s manner and expression to seem unaffected. But he wished to reach deeper. He wanted involuntary reactions. He wished to glimpse what he regarded as the man’s natural character. He wanted to loosen the restraints and penetrate through the manner to the man. Along with many of his contemporaries he believed that a sitter’s physiognomy could be read like words on a page. Washington’s outward appearance could reveal his inner qualities, and the man’s thoughts, his genius, and even his soul could be got on canvas if only Stuart might be permitted to glimpse them.

  As if to make the task all the more intriguing, Stuart discovered that he beheld a man, as he confided to an English visitor to Philadelphia, whose features were unlike any he had “ever observed in any other human being; the sockets of the eyes, for instance, are larger than what he ever met before, and the upper part of the nose broader.” The characteristics he discerned in Washington’s face were, he surmised, “indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable passions, and had he been born in the forests, it was his opinion that he would have been the fiercest man amongst the savage tribes.”13

  Stuart set to work to put the man on canvas. He began, as he always did, with the face. He believed that the nose, more than the eyes, mouth, or other facial features, anchored the face. He worked quickly—three or even as few as two sittings were not unusual for Mr. Stuart—as he applied thin layers of paint. He began with white, blocking in an approximation of the features. Once he had outlined the face, he added thin, dark lines to define the mouth and eyes.

  After the face assumed a satisfactory shape, he brushed in the hair, which was swept back into a queue tied with a black ribbon in Washington’s usual fashion. When he got to the man’s chest and shoulders, Stuart was careful not to let them distract from Washington’s face. In his portrait of General Gates, Stuart had labored over the general’s military regalia—the epaulettes, sword, a medal, and other adornments—but he portrayed this general in a very plain costume. Aside from the shirt ruffle at the throat and the narrow hair ribbon that curved at the back of the neck, the clothes were unremarkable. Stuart chose to leave the background unadorned, and the sitter’s hands were off the canvas, so nothing would draw the viewer’s attention away from the president’s face and head. Stuart set his painted Washington high on the canvas, so as to draw the eye up to the quite evidently tall and stately figure. Stuart softened the features on the left side of the face, adding shadows. When he finished, Stuart was not entirely happy with the somewhat empty expression on the likeness’s face. But it would have to do.

  Word of the portrait soon reached many ears. Inevitably, the match of the newcomer and the president produced great curiosity, and as the time came for a public viewing of the new portrait, the public was hungry to see what the “Modern Vandyke” had made of His Excellency. The portrait “created a great sensation,” and Stuart’s expectations for a business in Washington likeness were soon met.14His studio became a meeting place for important members of Philadelphia society, including Generals Knox and Lee, the British minister and his wife, members of the French nobility, and others. Many of these notables wanted portraits of themselves; more than a few desired copies of his George Washington.15

  On April 20, 1795, Stuart put pen to paper. He had been taking orders for some time, even before coming to Philadelphia, but enough had now accumulated that it was becoming difficult to keep track. He titled the sheet: A list of gentlemen who are to have copies of the Portrait of the President of the United States. Then he wrote down the names of those who had requested replicas, all thirty-two of them. Some of these men were friends from his English days, including Benjamin West, and many were Philadelphia merchants. There were New Yorkers, too, including “Col. Burr” and “Mr. Chief Justice Jay.” Some customers had already made deposits (he recorded the $200 paid by “I. Vaughan, Esq.”; that was the merchant Joseph Vaughan, who wanted two). When he added up the orders, the total amounted to thirty-nine replicas.16

  Stuart busied himself in the coming months, spending much of 1795 making more Washingtons, at times painting more than one at a time. On some canvases, he added a curtain in the background with a splash of pink in a blue sky. In others he emphasized the face with a red background that brightened in the area of the head. He varied the neck ruffle and the hair ribbon. He switched to painting Washington in his more regal black velvet suit.

  He took on an assistant, John Vanderlyn, a young man he had met in New York, an aspiring painter who had previously worked in Thomas Barrow’s color shop. Vanderlyn blocked out the basic shapes on some of the Washington canvases and painted copies of several other Stuart subjects. Even with help, however, Stuart failed to fill all his orders.17As Abigail Adams observed, “Genius is always ecentirck, I think . . . [T]here is no knowing how to take hold of this Man, nor by what means to prevail upon him to fulfill his engagements.”18But Stuart did collect his $100 fees from more than a dozen of his customers for completed replicas.

  An early version was delivered to Joseph Vaughan of Philadelphia, who sent it on to London to his father, Samuel, a friend and admirer of Washington. The elder Vaughan had presented the General with an elegant mantelpiece of carved marble for Mount Vernon, which, at first,
Washington thought “too elegant and costly by far . . . for my own room and republican style of living” (he installed it anyway in his New Room). An engraving of Vaughan’s Washington soon appeared in a translation of the book Essays on Physiognomy by the Swiss theologian Johann Caspar Lavater. Lavater was a chief proponent of the science of physiognomy, believing passionately that temperament and character could be read in facial features and expressions. (In examining busts of William Pitt, the same “Great Commoner” whom Peale had memorialized years before, Lavater recognized the eyebrows “of a seer, a thinker, a political prophet”; in the nose, forehead, lips, eyes, and even Pitt’s warts, Lavater saw revealed to him an “eagle’s face humanized . . . it is a hovering, gliding eagle, high over the nations of Eu rope; London is its eyrie, Parliament in its view, England under its wings”).19Of Washington’s image he observed that the eyes did not seem to possess the “heroic force . . . inseparable from true greatness.” While he had never seen the General in the flesh, Lavater still offered his interpretation of Washington. “Every thing in this face announces the good man,” Lavater observed, “a man upright, of simple manners, sincere, firm, reflecting and generous.”20

  Not everyone liked Stuart’s portrait, of course. The Peale family of painters—most notably Charles Willson—saw imperfections. As son Rembrandt reported, “We all agreed, that though beautifully painted and touched in a masterly style, as a likeness it is inferior to its merit as a painting—the complexion being too fair and too florid, the forehead too flat, brows too high, eyes too full, nose too broad, about the mouth too much inflated, and the neck too long.”21