Fascinating, fine & finished; the Stuart portrait of Joseph Brant. Could there be another as of yet undiscovered Stuart portrait of this most famous native North American?

During the American Revolutionary war, American native Indian populations were forced to chose sides between the Americans and the British. Joseph Brant (1743-1807), also known by his Mohawk name of Thayendanegea, became one of the most well known American Native military and political leaders of his time.  Brant chose to side with the British, who promised to protect Indian lands from American settlers who were pushing deeper and deeper into Indian Territory.

Through his intellectual ability, charm and opportunity (his sister was the consort of Sir William Johnson the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs), Brant rose through the British military ranks—becoming a prominent leader of Indian forces allied to the British in a number of  critical Revolutionary war fights.

At the same time through his social abilities and elegant language skills he rose to social prominence in English society. In London to lobby for the protection of Mohawk lands in North America, he was presented at court to George III.  He became an instant celebrity and received reassurances of protection for his peoples and their lands. His portraits were commissioned by the British aristocracy.  Although he seems to have worn “Anglo clothing” in his daily life, he adopted “Indian dress” in his portraits (full Iroquois chieftain garb, in one portrait by George Romney holding a tomahawk).   

From Gilbert Stuart, The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles p 71 on the portrait of Brant commissioned by the Duke of Northumberland:

“Stuart gave Brant a fully modeled visage projecting the strong characterization for which he had become so well known. The limpid eyes, strong nose, resolute mouth, and slightly flaccid jawline describe a man of intelligent determination capable of conciliatory debate. The clothing maintains his nationality and his dignity; over his open collar shirt a cape of small joined silver rings encircles his shoulders, a wide sliver armband is on his right biceps, and four silver bracelets are on his exposed right wrist.  …. The silver ornamentation conveys his high rank; some of it was costume embellishment, but most pieces would have been ceremonial gifts. Tied around his neck he wears the gorget from George III on a blue satin ribbon and hanging below that, a medallion portrait of the king in an imposing brass locket.  He is, by Stuart’s brush, the exemplification of the savage and noble, an Iroquois statesman ornamented by the British.”

Joseph Brant by Gilbert Stuart 1786

   23 1/2 x 24 in     oil on canvas

The Northumberland Estates, Alnwick Castle,

Collection of the Duke of Northumberland

A reader of this blog has sent a photo of a portrait of J. Brant (above), and asks if it might be an original Stuart.  He lists a few reasons why he thinks it might be.

"I am sending you some images of Joseph Brant that I would appreciate you looking at.  I came across your blog while researching this painting.  I do realize that he is the most painted and copied native in the world but I do feel there is a possibilty it could be by Stuart.

• bought at auction in Paris Ontario (next town to Brantford)
• on panel which I've heard he did if it was going to Upper Canada due to conditions
• Label on back from framing co. operated from 1886 to 1891 in Leeds England
• it is 11 1/2 by 14"
• I believe I see blue shades in the skin

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This would be a copy of a portrait of Brant, 30 x 25, now held at the Fenimore Art Mueseum, Cooperstown, N.Y (thought to be an original).  Could his be a Stuart original copy, the reader wants to explore the possibility.....

My take, with the help of my portraitist consultant.

This portrait is definitely a copy of the Stuart portrait now at the Fenimore Art Museum (considered to be original, in my opinion it does not look to be a Stuart original. This portrait is not currently used by the experts when discussing Stuart's portrait of Brant).  But is it an original copy done by Stuart himself?  He is known to have made copies of his own portraits.
 The fact that it was sold in a town near Brantford is not special, as Brant was able to settle his people in this area after the British loss to the American rebels.  The town was named in honor of this most celebrated warrior/diplomat.  But Stuart was the reigning king of portraits (then and now), and to make a copy of his style & of a portrait done by him would be common.

• the first significant clue when determining whether a portrait is done by Stuart (he did not sign his portraits) is the famed Stuart coloring and rendering of the skin tones.  When comparing the two portraits above, the facial coloring of my reader's portrait is flat and one-dimensional without any demonstration of Stuart's ability to create the brilliant translucence and transparent hues in the skin tones.  The reader's portrait seems to be a predominantly orangish color, but that could be the photography.
• Stuart also uses dashes of this translucence in other more minor features; such as in buttons, lace, or in the case of the Northumberland Stuart portrait above, the "joined silver rings", and in the other ornaments decorating the warrior. The copyist makes a stab at a similar effort without much success.
• in the words of my consultant "the painter copied the picture without understanding the anatomy of the face."  The facial structure is squattish, flat and disproportionate.
• Stuart did make copies of his originals.  The most famous of his numerous copies are those of George Washington; this was a means to make more money on a portrait that was highly in demand at the time.  Although Brant was a well-known figure, he was celebrated only in England and not in America where he was seen as a vicious enemy--thus negating the theory that Stuart would make copies of this portrait in order to increase his income.  The size of this portrait is not in keeping with Stuart practice. The copies that Stuart produced were eerily similar to the original, in style, content, and size.  He sold them for an exorbitant price.

Conclusion: This portrait sent by my reader is a nice/very good.... but amateur copy.

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Portrait of Joseph Brant 1776 by George Romney, oil on canvas, 50 x 39 in.
The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
In his right hand is the tomahawk. The Earl of Warwick commissioned this portrait.

For more posts on BRANT click here
and here ---(at this time I thought that my Stuart portrait was of 
"Major Samuel Meeker" who in fact is known to have skirmished with Brant.)
***

there is an update to the ownership of this portrait:  it was sold in July of 2014

"BY ORDER OF THE 12TH DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND AND THE TRUSTEES OF THE NORTHUMBERLAND ESTATES":

Gilbert Stuart---PORTRAIT OF THE MOHAWK CHIEFTAIN THAYENDANEGEA, KNOWN AS JOSEPH BRANT   (1742–1807)

Estimate1,000,000 — 1,500,000 

LOT SOLD. 4,114,500 GBP 

PROVENANCE 

Commissioned in 1786 by Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland (1742-1817);

By descent to his son, Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland (1785–1847);

By inheritance to his brother, Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland (1792–1865);

By inheritance to his cousin, George Percy, 5th Duke of Northumberland (1778–1867);

By descent to his son, Algernon George Percy, 6th Duke of Northumberland (1810–1899);

By descent to his son, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland (1846–1918);

By descent to his son Alan Ian Percy, 8th Duke of Northumberland (1880–1930), who married Helen Gordon-Lennox (1886–1965), daughter of Charles Gordon-Lennox, 7th Duke of Richmond;

By descent to their second son, Hugh Algernon Percy (1914–1988), who succeeded his brother, the 9th Duke, as 10th Duke of Northumberland in 1940, after he was killed in action whilst serving with the Grenadier Guards during the retreat to Dunkirk;

By descent to his son, Henry Alan Walter Richard Percy, 11th Duke of Northumberland (1953–1995);

By inheritance to his brother, Ralph George Algernon Percy, 12th and present Duke of Northumberland (b. 1956), the current owner.

Is Janet's portrait of Washington by GS? portraits of George Washington (and Meeker) &.... When Stuart was Really Interested in a male face...

See post previous to this, for backgound on Janet's portrait of President George Washington.
After leaving America to make a name for himself in London and Dublin (1775-1793), Stuart returned and for the rest of his life painted in New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, spending his last days in Boston. He left NY for Philadelphia with the express intent to paint George Washington in person.  Philadelphia, when he arrived in 1794, was the temporary capital of the US from 1790 to 1800.  Besides his by now well established reputation as a fine portrait painter, through familial contacts he was well placed to move among the elite economic and political circles.  A letter of introduction to the President from John Jay (first Chief Justice of the United States, a Founding Father) led to an invitation to visit.
Stuart painted only three portraits with live sittings, painting afterwards at least 100 replications of these works.  Most are based on the Athenaeum portrait, called The Athenaeum.  This unfinished work (which also includes wife Martha in a separate portrait) is one of Stuart's most celebrated portraits, although unfinished.
Stuart painted Washington in 1795 when the Pres. was 63.
Stuart asked permission to keep The Athenaeum to fulfill commissions for replicas (providing a steady income--and not requiring the President to sit for any commissioned portraits, which the President did not like to do.) The President saw the advantage for Stuart in keeping the original and thought it a great idea for the artist to keep it.
In the post just previous to this one, Janet asked about whether her portrait of George Washington might be a Gilbert Stuart.  So now you, the reader, knows that the majority of portraits of GW painted by Stuart were based on The Athenaeum.
Thus, an answer to this question would be to present portraits here, and let you decide. Some easy things to look for: The age of Janet's portrait seems to be within the realm of possibility, as does the background of reddish brown curtain sweeping over the shoulder.  The detail photo depicting the neckcloth appears to distort the chin somewhat, that should be discounted (ie a bad photo).  The costume is correct; but does the neckcloth itself show the bright swerving dashes of alternating dark and light characteristic to GS's treatment of the jabot ( ruffle on the front of the shirt.)?  A common GS detail is a light spray of white on the shoulder of the jacket (for his earlier male portraits when men wore their hair in this style) indicating some of the powder which has floated off the hair.  The proportionality of the facial features in Janet's portrait seems to be correct. All in all her portrait captures the likeness of Washington and is a fine portrait.  But.......IS the portrait by the MASTER?                                                              

                                     Below Samuel Meeker's portrait from the Philadelphia period

"But when he was really interested in a male face, he painted with that compound of insight, sympathy, and scientific detachment which is the ideal of modern biographers."  On Desperate Seas by James Thomas Flexner  ---A BIOGRAPHY of Gilbert Stuart

One might ask, was Stuart interested in the person of Samuel Meeker?  Can you see Meeker's personality? Does the portrait somehow reflect a calm personality, wisdom, kindness?  

How does the master acheive that?!                                         

     the unfinished Athenaeum, kept by the artist until his death to make additional GW portraits

The Gibbs-Channing-Avery Portrait at the MET

Janet's unsigned George Washington portrait.

• Skin hues are not subtle and lack the renowned inner vibrancy, flesh tints and transition areas are rough without use of the creamy, subtle light dark shading, & masterful coloring 
• the hair/jabot without characteristic dashes of brilliant structure, shoulders seem disproportionately thin, the portrait lacks the typical Stuart "photographic likeness", enabling the viewer to study the sitter's personality
• lips/chin lack firm realism, as does the shadowing of the beard (see Meeker)   
• As I wrote Janet, the portrait is decisively NOT a Stuart.   

Here is another example of a portrait that may or may have been done by Stuart.
With comments from the expert

for Stuart's pigments and paint application click here

A NEW BIO OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
"George Washington: The Wonder of the Age" by John Rhodehamel 
"This sympathetic, though not uncritical, account of the first president's journey from minor Tidewater gentry to mythic statesman is crisply written, admirably concise and never superficial.  As a brief acount of Washington's life, it is unlikely to be surpassed for many years." review by F. Bordewich

Stuart's Pigments and Paint Application continued (2nd part)

SEGMENTS FROM:
American Painters on Technique: the Colonial Period to 1860, "Gilbert Stuart: the First American Old Master": Mayer, Lance, and Gay Myers; Los Angeles, J Paul Getty Museum, 2011

Stuart also had opinions about Titian and Rubens that may have influenced his own method of applying paint.  In sharp contrast to painters who loved the mellowness and deep tone of Titian's paintings, Stuart believed that "Titian's works were not by any means so well blended when they left the esel...Rubens...must have discovered more tinting, or separate tints, or distinctiness, than others did, and that, as time mellowed and incorporated the tints, he (Rubens) resolved not only to keep his colours still more distinct against the ravages of time, but to follow his own impetuous disposition with spirited touches." [Dickinson "Remarks" 2.]

One odditity in the layout of Stuart's palette, as reported in three different accounts,[Jouette 1816] is that the color blue was placed farthest to the right, next to the thumbhole.  This position of honor (nearest to the hand that holds the paintbrush) was traditionally given to the white pigment and is shown that way in most other palettes of all periods.  It is tempting to think that Stuart had a special reason for placing his blue in this prominent position--he loved to commingle bluish strokes with his flesh to imitate the effect of blue veins under the skin.  But this unusual arrangement is contradicted by five other accounts that have him placing the blue more conventionally on the other (left) side of the palette,[Dunlap 1834] so it is possible that Stuart sometimes arranged his palette this way, and sometimes not.

Stuart's principal blue pigment (and in some accounts the only one) was Antwerp blue.  Unfortunately, this is an imprecise term, and we cannot say exactly what "Antwerp blue" meant in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  By the middle of the nineteenth century, the term had come to mean a weaker variety of Prussian blue, but modern authorities point out that in earlier times colormen may have also sold completely different copper-based pigments--or even mixtures of pigments--under the name Antwerp blue.[Harley 1982] During Stuart's lifetime, the finest and most permanent blue color was known to be ultramarine, but it was extremely expensive (the much cheaper artificial ultramarine becoming available only after the artist's death in 1828). The expense of ultramarine helps explain some of the slightly confusing explanations of various observers about Stuart's use of blue pigments.  Jouette said Stuart "uses no ultramarine but keeps it by him." [Jouette 1816]  Jocelyn gave the most complete explanation: "though he [Stuart] preferred Antwerp blue to all other ordinary blues, he would doubtless have used Ultramarine...but for the expense, and especially the trouble & uncertainty of procuring it." The final word on this matter should be given to Stuart himself, who would probably have been impatient with the discussion: "I can produce what I wish from these colours, nor can any man say whether or not I put into my faces ultramarine.  Colouring is at best a matter of fancy & taste." [Jouette 1816]

Stuart did not change his palette very much during the time when there are good records of his colors..........TO BE CONTINUED...



     

Stuart's Pigments and Paint Application

SEGMENTS FROM:
American Painters on Technique: the Colonial Period to 1860, "Gilbert Stuart: the First American Old Master": Mayer, Lance, and Gay Myers; Los Angeles, J Paul Getty Museum, 2011

In 3 parts:
In spite of {Benjamin} West's statement that "it is of no use to steal Stuart's colors [if you want to paint as he does you must steal his eyes]", American painters were extremely curious to know which pigments Stuart used to achieve his dazzling effects.  As a result, we probably know more about his pigments than about those of any other early American painter.
The most remarkable thing about Stuart's colors is that they are not very remarkable.  Portrait painting can be done (and has been done for centuries) with relatively few pigments.  In fact, all contemporary observers agreed that Stuart used a limited number of pigments and mixtures on his palette.  It was traditional for a painter to place dabs of pure colors around the edge of the palette (usually beginning with white next to the thumbhole and proceeding left to the darker pigments) and also to place some premixed "tints" in the area below this row.  Stuart apparently placed seven or eight pure pigments and nine or ten premixed tints on his palette, which is fewer than many other artists whose palette arrangements have been recorded.  For instance, Thomas Bardwell, in his 1756 book, recommended twelve pure colors and twelve mixed tints for portraits.  In the early nineteenth century, some writers recommended up to sixty-six mixed tints! Jocelyn's description of Stuart's actual wooden palette took a gentle poke at artists who thought that a large number of mixed tints would help them; he said Stuart's "pallet-board" was "smaller than the large pallets affected by some lesser artists."
A limited number of pigments and mixtures makes sense given Stuart's style of painting, and in fact it was his method of applying his paints that was unique, rather than the nature of his pigments.  In the use of his palette and the application of his paints, Stuart was nearly the opposite of Copely, who was said to have spent hours premixing the exact tint with his palette knife for every flesh tone and shadow.  Stuart, by comparison, "condemned the practice of mixing a colour on a knife, and comparing it with whatever was to be imitated.---'Good flesh colouring,' he said, 'partook of all colours, not mixed, so as to be combined in one tint, but shining through each other, like the blood through the natural skin.'  Stuart could not endure Copely's laboured flesh, which he compared to tanned leather."
Suart used, in Jouett's words, "chopping" strokes of distinct colors to give the effect of translucent flesh, thereby avoiding the leathery look that he disliked in Copely's work.  Jouett also reported Stuart's advice to "keep your colours as separate as you can.  No blending, tis destruction to clear and beautiful effect."  Others noticed this as well; John Cogdell, after describing how Stuart combined different colors, added: "Tho this is not done on his pallette but only as they are wanted with the pencil.  Mr. Stewart lays one tint over another." In a detailed account of Stuart's method, Obadiah Dickinson described how a portrait became more distinct as it progressed; "Mr. Steward endeavours in the first sitting to give the appearance of the person at 20 yards distant and in each succeeding sitting to advance its effect nearer until it be completed at 2 yards distance."  But Dickinson noted that even in final touches, Stuart advised; "What you do in the shadows over the glazing must be finished if possible with a single touch or you will spoil the beauty of your work."

Stuart also had opinions about Titian and Rubens that may have influenced his own method of applying paint............ TO BE CONTINUED

Samuel Meeker 1763-1831 a merchant in Philadelphia