ÿ Born in North Kingston, Rhode Island and raised in Newport, Stuart was taught by a local Scottish painter who took him to Scotland, but his mentor_s death forced Stuart back to America.ÿ During the Revolutionary War,
he returned to England to study with the American expatriate Benjamin West.ÿ As success came, so did debt which forced Stuart to Dublin, Ireland and then to America, where he eventually became the most highly regarded
portraitist of his day. A skillful master of his craft, Stuart painted directly on the canvas, without using any preliminary drawing. By the end of his career, Stuart had painted over a thousand portraits of important
political figures.ÿ One of his most famous portraits of George Washington was the _Athenaeum Head_ currently on the dollar bill. In this painting, the woman and children are posed against a drawn drape in the style
of British portraiture.ÿ The similarity of the colors used in the sash, chair, curtain and trim on the young boy_s jacket move the viewer_s eye around the canvas to encompass all the figures. The woman is wearing a
simple, elegant, robe l_Anglais, a gown favored by portrait painters of the period.ÿ The woman_s hair is lightly powdered and fashionably styled in the coiffure la h‚risson, or _hedgehog,_ in which the hair was cut
short in the front, frizzed to the ends and then brushed up away from the face.
