Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans

by Charles Henry Hart

G. Stuart.

The “illiberal misrepresentations” referred to were of course the reported inconveniences that Jefferson had suffered; and praise such as this, from Stuart, is, as approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley, praise indeed.

A few days afterward the Boston “Daily Advertiser” announced: “The portrait bust of Gilbert Stewart, Esq., lately executed by Mr. Browere, will be exhibited by him at the Hubard Gallery, this evening. This exhibition is made by him for the purpose of showing that he can present a perfect likeness, and he will prove at the same time, by the certificate of Mr. Stewart, that the operation is without pain.” Two days later the local press fairly teemed with laudatory notices of Browere’s work. The Boston “American” said: “This bust has been adjudged by all who have examined it and are acquainted with the original to be a striking and perfect resemblance.” The “Commercial Gazette” said: “It is a fine likeness, in truth we think the best we ever saw of any one. We particularly enquired of Mr. Stuart’s family if he suffered by any difficulty of breathing or if the process was in any degree painful, and were assured that there was nothing of an unpleasant or painful nature in it.”

Considering Stuart’s eminence in art, a position fully recognized in his lifetime, and his irascible temper and unyielding character, such action as his toward Browere, not only in submitting to have the mask taken, but in certifying to it and permitting it to be publicly exhibited for the benefit of Browere’s reputation, speaks volumes of the highest authority in support of the workman and his work.

Stuart’s daughter, Jane, who died at Newport, in 1888, at a very advanced age, and was as “impossible” in some respects as was her distinguished father, remembered well the incident of the mask being taken, and testified to its marvellous life-speaking qualities. Having lost all knowledge of its whereabouts, she searched for years in the hope of finding it, since she looked upon it as the next thing to having her father before her. Finally, in the Centennial year, it was discovered

in the possession of Browere’s son, and was purchased by Mr. David King, of Newport, as a present for Miss Stuart. But Miss Stuart felt that her little cottage, so well remembered by many visitors to Newport, was no place for so big a work, and desired that it might be placed in a public gallery, which wish Mr. King complied with, by presenting it to the Redwood Library, at Newport, where it may be seen by all interested in Stuart or in Browere’s life masks. Jane Stuart is the subject of Colonel Wentworth Higginson’s charming paper, “One of Thackeray’s Women,” in his volume of Essays entitled “Concerning All of Us.”

Gilbert Stuart was born in what was called the Narragansett country, on December 3, 1755. The actual place of his birth is now called Hammond Mills, near North Kingston, Rhode Island, about nine miles from Narragansett Pier; and the old-fashioned gambrel-roofed, low-portalled house, in which the future artist first saw light, still stands at the head of Petaquamscott Pond. The snuff-mill set up by Gilbert Stewart, the father of the painter, who had come over from Perth, in Scotland, at the suggestion of a fellow Scotchman, Doctor Thomas Moffatt, to introduce the manufacture of snuff into the colonies, was located, by the race, immediately under the room in which Stuart was born, both being part of the same building, so that Stuart’s excuse for taking snuff, that he was born in a snuff-mill, is literally true.

When four months old, the third and youngest child of the snuff-grinder and his beautiful wife, Elizabeth Anthony, was carried, on Palm Sunday, to the Episcopal church and baptized “Gilbert Stewart.” The significance of this record is found in the orthography of the surname and in the limitation of the baptismal name. Stuart’s name will be found in print quite frequently as “Gilbert Charles Stuart,” and I have seen it as “Charles Gilbert Stuart”; and the Jacobin leaning of his Scotch sire, is commonly supported by the naming of the child for the last of the Royal Stuarts, the romantic Prince Charlie. This pretty legend, built to support unreliable tradition, is blown to the winds by the prosaic church record, which shows that the artist’s orthography was an assumption, and his name simply Gilbert Stewart. That this plebeian spelling of the royal name, was not an error or accident of the scribe who made it, is proved by signatures of the snuff-grinder which have come down to us.