Gilbert Stuart completed the portrait of the new bride, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, as well as portraits of 15 other women during his Washington period from late 1803 to early 1805. Scholars have often discounted this period in Stuart's work for its "compositional simplicity" and repeat choice of a stock white dress for the portraits of many of these women. But to dismiss this period is Stuart's work is to dismiss a period when Stuart positioned himself in the center of the "first circle" in Washington, a circle that included Dolley Madison and her most ambitious friends. Women, in this era after the American and French revolutions, had the freedom to enter into the public discourse. They were liberated from many of the more conservative principals of the early colonial period, shedding their restrictive clothing in the process. Stuart's salon, a highly visible public venue, as well as his ability to portray the strength of character and a direct, forthright gaze of the American woman, all made him extremely popular with women. Stuart, a critical force within the construction of a new image for this Nation, based on Jeffersonian ideas of republicanism, based his practice on simple, natural design influences. My goal is to more thoroughly examine Stuart's decisions in composing Betsy Bonaparte's portrait, as well as the facts surrounding her marriage to Napoleon Bonaparte's youngest brother. I will then consider why Elizabeth Bonaparte's wedding portrait represents the chef d'ouvre of his work during this period and how the young bride served as his muse, influencing his Washington style, and the women who followed her into the painter's studio. / text

In 1800, Gilbert Stuart began three paintings of his friend, republican writer, Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton--the Worcester, Winterthur, and Boston portraits. While Morton has been remembered more for a tragic personal family scandal than for her literary endeavors, Stuart's provocative images acknowledged her as both a poet and an intellect. His portraits presented a progressive and potentially controversial interpretation of his sitter--the lovely and learned Morton--by prioritizing the writer's life of the mind rather than her socially prescribed life in the world. This study reconstructs the circumstances by which Stuart composed the group of Morton paintings that culminate in his unorthodox Worcester rendering through which he ultimately depicted Morton as the first woman of ideas in American art. Supported by close readings of her work, this dissertation illuminates both the course and depth of the exceptional personal and professional relationship between Morton and Stuart. The paths of the two republican figures crossed at several historic junctures and is highlighted by the interconnectivity of their work. Most significantly, the Stuart portraits represent an ideal lens through which to view Morton's life and work as well as to follow the Boston native's transformation into one of America's earliest women of ideas. / text

Relatively little is known of European artists who worked for short periods of time in the American Colonies during the eighteenth century. Perhaps Cosmo Alexander was typical of other artists who came to America seeking greater opportunity than in their homeland, only to leave several years later, perhaps disillusioned and no wealthier. Artists who are better known stayed in America long enough to build up clientele in a broad area and produced enough works to have many survive long enough to be documented by later sources. As the subjects in many of Alexander's portraits show, there was a large prosperous middle-class patronage of the art of portraiture. Considering the social conventions of the time, personal references and letters of recommendation would have facilitated travel and introduction to prospective clients. The emphasis of this research is the patronage which Cosmo Alexander found in the American Colonies as evidenced by portraits executed between 1765 and 1771. Family connections, Scottish ancestry and communities having large Scottish populations have played a part in determining probable routes. In 1961 Gavin L. M. Goodfellow submitted a thesis to Oberlin College on Cosmo Alexander. This was the first and (to date) the only extensive monograph on the artist. The thesis was general in nature, covering Alexander's life and listing all paintings known at that time, only sixteen of which were believed to have been painted in America. Because he dealt in detail with Alexander's total biography and stylistic characteristics, only one chapter was devoted to American works. Since Goodfellow's research the number of American paintings signed by or attributed to Alexander has increased from sixteen to twenty-six. With greater documentary evidence available, patterns can be established and generalizations made which possibly are typical of other artists in similar circumstances.