year as that in which Browere made his life masks, Gilbert Stuart painted his famous portrait of “John Adams at the age of ninety”; and Browere’s bust will bear comparison with Stuart’s portrait. I must tell a story connected with the painting of this portrait by Stuart, which, while a little out of place, especially as we have a chapter devoted to Gilbert Stuart, comes in better here than there. Stuart had painted a portrait of John Adams as a younger man. It is the familiar portrait of the great statesman by that artist. John Quincy Adams was desirous that Stuart should paint another of his father at the advanced age of ninety, and applied to the artist for the purpose. But Stuart was too old to go down to Quincy, and John Adams was too old to come up to Boston. Finally, Stuart agreed that he would go down to Quincy, for the purpose, if he were paid half of the price of the picture before he went. To this John Quincy Adams gladly assented, and Stuart went to Quincy and had the first sitting. Then John Quincy Adams could not get Stuart to go down for a second sitting, and, as his father was past ninety, he feared he might die before the picture was finished. He at last succeeded in getting Stuart to go down for a second sitting by paying him the balance of the price of the picture. Then the artist would not go down to finish it, and the only way John Quincy Adams got him to complete the portrait was by promising him, if he would make the journey and do the work, he would pay him the agreed price over again. This is only one of many illustrations of the character of the greatest portrait-painter this country has produced, and the peer of any portrait-painter who has ever lived.
Browere broke his journey from Virginia to Massachusetts by a rest at the country’s capital, and while there he took a mask of the ruling President, John Quincy Adams, and one of his young son, Charles Francis Adams. It was this young man who wrote to Browere as follows:
Washington City, October [28], 1825.
The president requests me to state to Mr. Browere that he will be able to give him two hours tomorrow morning at seven o’clock at his (Mr. Browere’s) rooms on Pennsylvania Avenue. He is so much engaged at present that this is the only time he can conveniently spare for the purpose of your executing his portrait bust from life.
C. F. Adams.
John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767, and died in the Speaker’s room of the House of Representatives at Washington, February 28, 1848. He has been called the most cultivated occupant that the Presidential chair has ever had; but his administration was unimportant, and he
