Publisher Description

Arguably the most gifted American portraitist of the late-18th and early 19th centuries, Gilbert Stuart is perhaps best known for his "Athenaeum" portrait of George Washington. This book explores Stuart's life and times, and presents his famous paintings as well as many never before published. 16 color plates. 103 halftones.

"Stuart Gilbert's friendship with James Joyce began in Paris in 1927 after Gilbert read several pages from a forthcoming French translation of Ulysses in the window of Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company book shop and went in to tell Beach that the translation was poorly done. She reported the encounter to Joyce, who subsequently sought out Gilbert. Their meeting began a literary collaboration and friendship that lasted until Joyce's death in 1941." "This journal is a chronicle of that remarkable and productive friendship. Stuart Gilbert records many amusing anecdotes and provocative opinions regarding Joyce's social life, his relationship with his wife, Nora, and his compositional techniques for Finnegans Wake. Also included in the book are some of Joyce's previously unpublished letters to Gilbert (also reproduced in photographs), numerous unpublished photographs, and a typically dyspeptic 1941 essay on Joyce, Paul Leon, and Herbert Gorman by Gilbert. The volume is fully annotated and contains an introduction by noted Joyce scholar Thomas F. Staley." "These materials from the Stuart Gilbert Archive of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin offer new perspectives on literary Paris of the 1920s and 1930s. They will be important for everyone interested in the modernist period."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Our founding fathers (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al) were always one step ahead of history and having an artist of such immense talents as Gilbert Stuart to paint their portraits has made the images of our founding fathers indelible in the minds of the modern reader. As a TJ enthusiast I often wonder how amazing it must of been to have "sat" for Gilbert Stuart a known storyteller and have your portrait painted. Mr. Jefferson was a favorite portrait sitter and this book is a lovely trip down memory lane (circa 18th century) to read about the fascinating story behind the portraits and the artist.

A vibrant and original perspective on the American Revolution through the stories of the five great artists whose paintings animated the new American republic. The images accompanying the founding of the United States--of honored Founders, dramatic battle scenes, and seminal moments--gave visual shape to Revolutionary events and symbolized an entirely new concept of leadership and government. Since then they have endured as indispensable icons, serving as historical documents and timeless reminders of the nation's unprecedented beginnings. As Paul Staiti reveals in Of Arms and Artists, the lives of the five great American artists of the Revolutionary period--Charles Willson Peale, John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, Benjamin West, and Gilbert Stuart--were every bit as eventful as those of the Founders with whom they continually interacted, and their works contributed mightily to America's founding spirit. Living in a time of breathtaking change, each in his own way came to grips with the history they were living through by turning to brushes and canvases, the results often eliciting awe and praise, and sometimes scorn. Their imagery has connected Americans to 1776, allowing us to interpret and reinterpret the nation's beginning generation after generation. The collective stories of these five artists open a fresh window on the Revolutionary era, making more human the figures we have long honored as our Founders, and deepening our understanding of the whirlwind out of which the United States emerged.

Early American painter Gilbert Stuart has long been mistakenly represented as a hard-drinking rogue, habitual liar, and inexplicable financial failure. To explain his stylistic unevenness as an artist, he is assumed to have had an inferior assistant, but the documentary evidence for an assistant who painted on his portraits is non-existent-in fact, there is evidence to the contrary. This ground-breaking study demonstrates that Stuart suffered from a hereditary form of manic depression, leading him to create pictures that contain peculiar lapses characteristic of a manic-depressive, or bipolar, artist. Using documentary and empirical evidence-from diaries and letters to x-radiographs of paintings-this book fills important gaps in our knowledge of Stuart, and connects the strange visual effects in some of Stuart's paintings with cognitive deficits attendant with the disorder. In addition to Stuart, other bipolar artists, including George Romney, Raphaelle Peale, Gilbert Stuart Newton, and William Rimmer, are discussed in relation to these deficits, revealing patterns which carry broader implications for all manic-depressive artists. This volume is a significant contribution not only to studies of Stuart and the four other painters but also to our understanding of the mind of a manic-depressive artist. It bridges the broad disciplines of art history and psychopathology.

This volume pays tribute to 4 early American painters, Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Charles Wilson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart.