by young men who wished instruction. If he thought them
pert or lacking in talent, he would demolish them with terrible invective. You had to watch your step in
Stuart's studio. Once his nephew, Gilbert Stuart Newton, who was to become well known as a genre painter,
rushed into the master's room, flourished his brush, and cried with high animal spirits: "Now, old gentleman,
I'll teach you to paint."
"You'll teach me to paint, will you? I'll teach you
manners." And not happening to have gout that day, Stuart kicked him out of the room.
However, he was happy to assist aspiring painters
who were earnest, civil, and talented. John Hill Morgan in his recently published book
Gilbert Stuart and His Pupils
states that the following painters probably received
some help from Stuart: Mather Brown in Boston before Stuart's trip to London; John Trumbull in London;
George Place and John Comerford in Ireland; and, after Stuart's final return to America, Benjamin Trott,
John Vanderlyn, Rembrandt Peale, John R. Penniman, Thomas Sully, Gilbert Stuart Newton, the painter's
children Charles Gilbert and Jane Stuart, James Frothingharn, Matthew Harris Jouett, Jacob Eicholtz, Sarah
Goodridge, William James Hubard, John Neagle, Fabius Whiting, Henry Sargent, Francis Alexander, and Samuel
F. B. Morse. To these may be added on excellent evidence Martin Archer Shee, who succeeded Lawrence as
president of the Royal Academy, Nathaniel Jocelyn, and the American backwoods phenomenon Chester
Harding.
The list is long, but in most cases Stuart merely
gave the young men advice when they called on him; only a few were, like Jouett and Vanderlyn, actually
taken into his studio, and these for only several months apiece. Although Jouett and Frothingharn learned to
paint in Stuart's manner, it is usually extremely difficult to find traces of his style in the work of most
of the young men he advised.
Stuart was an impatient teacher, and his technique
was so personal that few could imitate it with success.
Indeed Stuart urged his pupils to copy not his work
but nature. He believed that young painters should shift for themselves as he had done; the talented would
work out a personal style, and it was best that the others fall by the wayside. He opposed art academies
because, he insisted, they encouraged the incompetent. "By and by," he shouted, "you will not by any chance
kick your foot against a dog kennel but out will start a portrait painter!"
As we have seen, two of Stuart's ten children, his
second son Charles Gilbert and his daughter Jane, essayed to follow in his footsteps. Trying to forget the
flaws and deficiencies of his own temperament, the unhappiness of his own career, Stuart concentrated his
hopes for the future on the boy, who he felt had a great talent as a landscapist. But he was so afraid of
destroying the lad's originality that he refused to give him any instruction. Charles Gilbert was forced to
appeal to Stuart's other pupils for hints at second hand.