GILBERT STUART 1755-1828
Portrait of Mr. Webb, c. 1787

Oil on canvas, oval, 29 x 24" (73.66 x 60.96 cm.)

Unsigned

Museum purchase, 921 -0-110

This oval portrait is entirely characteristic of work by Gilbert Stuart, although it bears some minor retouching by a later hand. When the Butler Institute purchased the portrait, the sitter was thought to be a Mr. Webb of County Donegal, Ireland. The portrait's earliest known owner, Sir Hugh Lane, a prominent picture collector and dealer, supplied this identification when he brought the picture to the United States, along with several other paintings, probably in April of 1915. On his return trip to England in May of that year, Sir Hugh drowned when the Lusitania was sunk, and the portrait passed, with its present title, from Ehrich Galleries of New York to Vose Galleries of Boston. Since then, the sitter's identity has been questioned by Charles Merrill Mount, who listed the portrait in his 1964 biography of Stuart as "probably" of William Temple Franklin, grandson of Benjamin Franklin.
The costume and hairstyle, fitting for a fashionable gentleman, date from around 1785. If the portrait is of an Irishman, then Stuart painted the picture sometime after his arrival in Ireland in October of 1787 and before his departure for New York in 1793.
The artist had traveled in 1775 from Newport, Rhode Island, to London, at that time the art capital of the English-speaking world, in hopes of improving his artistic ability and his financial prospects. But his success with patrons in England, where his brushwork became freer and his colors more
decorative, encouraged him to spend money far beyond his means. For a while he was able to entertain lavishly and keep up a convincing show of living well, as did many of the London artists. Finally, his debts had so accumulated that he had to face arrest or flee his creditors. He chose the latter course and accepted a commission from the Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to visit him and paint his portrait in Dublin. Stuart's career continued in the same seesaw manner in Ireland, until he left for the United States with the characteristic intention of making a fortune by painting pictures of George Washington.
In the portrait of Mr. Webb, the hand inserted inside the waistcoat is a conventional gesture. Considered appropriate for a gentleman, the pose can be found in eighteenth- century books on deportment designed to teach ladies and gentlemen how to be socially correct in polite society. In this case, the position of the hand suits the oval format. Although Stuart could paint hands and objects as well as most of his contemporaries, his portraits and the testimony of those who knew him indicate that he was primarily interested in the head. Like the English artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, he left the secondary areas in a number of his portraits to be completed by others.

DORINDA EVANS