Newsletter: Summer 2004

The portrait of William Bayard (1761-1826) by Gilbert Stuart speaks eloquently of the interests of Viscountess Eccles. Bayard, a leading New York merchant and member of an important colonial family of Huguenot descent, was the only son of the loyalist William Bayard of New York and Castle Point, New Jersey (now Hoboken), to remain in America at the time of the Revolution; when the elder Bayard chose to leave the country, his other sons joined the British army. The American painter Gilbert Stuart (1755- 1828), from Newport, Rhode Island, avoided the Revolution by spending the years from 1775 to 1793 in London and Dublin. There he perfected his art and served a fashionable clientele. Upon his return to New York in 1793, he undertook a series of portraits of prominent Americans, among them Aaron Burr, Class of 1772. Especially notable was the iconic image of George Washington, of 1795, the artist's best known work and the most beloved portrait of the first president. The Bayard portrait has been dated to ca. 1794, and it fits well within the group of works with which the artist sought to establish his reputation in his homeland. The artist's American direct­ ness is evident in the frank gaze of the sitter, while the elegance of the apple­ green coat betrays Stuart's appreciation of cosmopolitan refinements. Freely brushed accouterments surround the highly finished head and hands, creating a balance between Stuart's close study of the sitter's likeness with gestural, sponta­ neous brushwork , in a demonstration of artistic skill. The inkwell is particularly noteworthy for sketchy virtuosity and bravura rendering. The rationales for the inclusion of unfinished passages in Stuart's works varied during his career. In the Washington portrait, the finished head was to serve as a model for a large num­ ber of variants. Before his return to America, Stuart collected the proceeds from single portrait sittings, in order to amass as much money as possible in a short time, leaving numerous partially painted canvases behind him. The eigh­teenth-century appreciation of the non­ finito in drawings, terracotta models, and ancient fragments may also have prompted the practice of leaving passages unfin­ished as an aesthetic choice.