Gilbert Stuart, A Biography.

Octavo, gray cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, red spine bands, 384 pp. Very Good, with bookplate and light edgewear. From Preface: One of the most incisive portrait painters of all time, founder of the American artistic tradition, Gilbert Stuart made the leaders of the American Revolution more vivid to posterity than any comparable group in history. George Washington and his generals, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, their wives, Cabinet members, and friends have a unique historical vitality, overshadowing the Royal Governors who preceded them and the pale figures who later filled their places, precisely because they were preserved as complex living human beings in Gilbert Stuart's portraits. This enigmatic genius returned to his native shore in 1793, bringing the most accomplished technical powers and artistic intellect America had ever seen. With him too came tales of a fabulous career on distant shores that ever since have seemed as suspect as his own too numerous portraits of Washington. Lack of substantial knowledge concerning Stuart has not been a credit to American scholarship. The precedent for future appraisals was set by William Dunlap, who gathered anecdotes reflecting Stuart's high spirits and ambiguous character, whithout noting the compensatory balance of his genius and lordly austerity. Fifty years after her father's death, Jane Stuart attempted to set the record straight. Three articles embodied her pious effort before she yielded to George Mason, who produced a rambling, uncritical volume with the redeeming virtue of preserving valuable materials. Art, Biography, American Biography, Artist Biography bslic.