Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
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Works with images
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/gilbert-stuart-537" aria-label="More by Gilbert Stuart" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Gilbert Stuart</a>
William Woollett Engraver
Presented by Henry Farrer 1849
adults
art and craft
artist, printmaker
arts and entertainment
clothing and personal items
drawing
engraving / etching plate
fine art and design, named works
fine arts and music
hat
individuals: male
leisure and pastimes
man
named individuals
objects
people
portraits
printmaking
West, Benjamin, painting, ‘The Death of General Wolfe’
Woollet, William
work and occupations
<p>This striking portrait depicts the engraver, William Woollett. With a copper plate in front of him and a burin or graver in hand, he looks up as if momentarily distracted from his work. The painting in the background offers the clue to his activity – it is recognisable as the acclaimed <span>Death of General Wolfe </span>by Benjamin West<span>, </span>which Woollett engraved in 1776. This was Woollett’s most commercially successful print. Gilbert Stuart’s portrait not only celebrates the engravers’ achievements, but also an important artistic collaboration. When Stuart exhibited the painting in 1783, it was praised for showing ‘the man himself’.</p><p><em>Gallery label, February 2024</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
18 October 2004 – 31 July 2005
2005-07-31
18 October 2004 – 16 January 2005
2005-01-16
2004-10-18
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)
http://www.metmuseum.org
27 March 2005 – 31 July 2005
2005-07-31
2005-03-27
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
2004-10-18
Gilbert Stuart
Loan-out
2 December 2011 – 29 July 2012
2012-07-29
2 December 2011 – 29 July 2012
2012-07-29
2011-12-02
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2011-12-02
Atlantic Britain
Collection based display
22 March 2013 – 1 September 2013
2013-09-01
22 March 2013 – 1 September 2013
2013-09-01
2013-03-22
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2013-03-22
Image of the British School
Collection based display
26 September 2022
26 September 2022
2022-09-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2022-09-26
Gallery 15
Collection based display
William Woollett the Engraver
support: 902 × 705 mm
frame: 1118 × 918 × 112 mm
Presented by Henry Farrer 1849
<div class="text">
<p>This striking portrait depicts the engraver, William Woollett. With a copper plate in front of him and a burin or graver in hand, he looks up as if momentarily distracted from his work. The painting in the background offers the clue to his activity – it is recognisable as the acclaimed <i>Death of General Wolfe </i>by Benjamin West<i>, </i>which Woollett engraved in 1776. This was Woollett’s most commercially successful print. Gilbert Stuart’s portrait not only celebrates the engravers’ achievements, but also an important artistic collaboration. When Stuart exhibited the painting in 1783, it was praised for showing ‘the man himself’. </p>
</div>

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2024-02-27T00:00:00
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<div class="text">
<p>
<b>Gilbert Stuart</b> 1755–1828</p>
<p>
<b>William Woollett</b>
<br/>Exhibited 1783<br/>Oil paint on canvas <br/>902 x 705 mm<br/>Presented by Henry Farrer 1849<br/>N00217</p>
<p>
<b>Ownership history</b>
<br/>Commissioned from the artist by John Boydell (1720–1804), London, c.1782–3; his nephew, Josiah Boydell (1752–1817), London; passed in 1817 (with the business) to Hurst, Robinson &amp; Co., London; then with the business in 1826 to Moon, Boys &amp; Graves, London; sold to John Newington Hughes (1778?–1848), Maidstone, after 1832; his sale, Christie’s, London, 14 April 1848, lot 104, bought for £73.10 by the picture dealer and restorer Henry Farrer (1798–1866), London; given by Farrer to the National Gallery, London 1849; deposited with the National Portrait Gallery, London 1883; returned to the National Gallery, London by 1923; transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1949.</p>
<p>
<b>Exhibition history</b>
<br/>
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<b>1783</b>
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<div class="right-block">Incorporated Society of Artists, London 1783 (263) (as ‘Portrait of an Artist’).</div>
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<b>1790</b>
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<div class="right-block">Shakespeare Gallery, Pall-Mall, London (on display c.1790–92).</div>
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<b>1832</b>
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<i>Winter Exhibition of the Works of Deceased and Living British Artists</i>, Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street Gallery, London 1832–3 (132) (lent by Moon, Boys &amp; Graves).</div>
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<b>1867</b>
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<i>National Portraits Exhibition</i>, National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, London 1867 (536).</div>
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<b>1930</b>
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<i>Jubilee Exhibition</i>, City of Bradford Corporation Art Gallery, Cartwright Memorial Hall, Bradford 1930 (15).  </div>
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<b>1980</b>
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<i>Benjamin West and his American Students</i>, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., 16 October 1980–4 January 1981; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 30 January–19 April 1981.</div>
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<b>2004</b>
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<i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 21 October 2004–16 January 2005; National Portrait Gallery, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 27 March–31 July 2005 (10).</div>
</div>
<p>
<b>References</b>
<br/>
</p><div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1783</b>
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<div class="right-block">
<i>The St James’s Chronicle</i>, 25–27 May 1783.</div>
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<b>1848</b>
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<i>Daily News</i>, 13 April 1848.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1849</b>
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<div class="right-block">‘The National Gallery: Portrait of Woollett, The Engraver’, <i>Illustrated London News</i>, 1 September 1849, p. 160.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1857</b>
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<div class="right-block">
<i>The Turner Gallery; With a Catalogue of the Vernon Collection, of Painting and Sculpture, now on View at Marlborough House</i>, London ?1857, unpaginated.</div>
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<b>1877</b>
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<div class="right-block">Henry Blackburn, <i>Pictorial Notes in the National Gallery: The British School</i>, London 1877, p.56.</div>
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<b>1878</b>
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<i>Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of Pictures in the National Gallery</i>, London 1878, pp.134–5.</div>
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<b>1879</b>
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<div class="right-block">George C. Mason, <i>The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart</i>, New York 1879, p.282.</div>
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<b>1884</b>
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<div class="right-block">George Scharf, <i>Historical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures, Busts &amp;c in the National Portrait Gallery</i>, London 1884, p.369.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1884</b>
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<div class="right-block">‘Art in December’,<i> Magazine of Art</i>, vol.7, January 1884.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1885</b>
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<div class="right-block">‘Art Notes and Reviews’, <i>Art Journal</i>, May 1885, p.157.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1888</b>
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<div class="right-block">George Scharf, <i>Historical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures, Busts &amp;c in the National Portrait Gallery</i>, new edition, London 1888, p.486.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1923</b>
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<div class="right-block">‘Appreciator’ (pseudonym),<i> </i>‘Artists who Matter LVII – Gilbert Stuart’,<i> International Interpreter</i>, vol.2, April–September 1923, p.344, reproduced.</div>
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<b>1926</b>
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<div class="right-block">Lawrence Park, <i>Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works</i>, 4 vols<i>,</i> New York 1926, no.939, reproduced.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1926</b>
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<div class="right-block">‘The Fine Arts’, <i>London Mercury</i>, vol.15, 1926–27, p.90.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1932</b>
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<div class="right-block">William T. Whitley, <i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, Cambridge MA 1932, pp.37–9, 55.</div>
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<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1946</b>
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<div class="right-block">Martin Davies, <i>National Gallery Catalogues: The British School</i>, London 1946, pp.144–5.</div>
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<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1968</b>
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<div class="right-block">William T. Whitley, <i>Artists and their Friends in England </i>(1928), 2 vols, New York 1968, vol.2, p.97, reproduced as frontispiece.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1980</b>
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<div class="right-block">Dorinda Evans, <i>Benjamin West and his American Students</i>, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. 1980, p.80, reproduced.</div>
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<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1985</b>
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<div class="right-block">Sven A. Bruntjen, <i>John Boydell 1719–1804: A Study of Art Patronage and Publishing in Georgian England</i>, New York 1985, p.63.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1986</b>
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<div class="right-block">Helmut Von Erffa and Allen Staley, <i>The Paintings of Benjamin West</i>, New Haven and London 1986, p.213, reproduced.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1986</b>
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<div class="right-block">Richard McLanathan, <i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, New York 1986, p.52, reproduced.</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1992</b>
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<div class="right-block">Morris Eaves, <i>The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake</i>, Ithaca 1992, p.34.</div>
</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1997</b>
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<div class="right-block">Alan McNairn, <i>Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century</i>, Liverpool 1997, pp.149–50, reproduced.</div>
</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>1999</b>
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<div class="right-block">Dorinda Evans, <i>The Genius of Gilbert Stuart</i>, Princeton 1999, p.35 reproduced</div>
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<div class="left-block">
<b>2004</b>
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<div class="right-block">Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, <i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2004, no.10 and pp.48–50.</div>
</div>
<p>The celebrated engraver William Woollett (1735–85) is shown as if at work on the copperplate of one of his most famous and commercially successful prints, that reproducing Benjamin West’s <i>Death of Wolfe</i> (1771; National Gallery of Canada), first published in 1776. He is shown in a red turban and a banyan (a large robe), the sort of informal, pseudo-oriental dress associated (by virtue of its suggestions of physical and intellectual liberty) with artists and writers in the eighteenth century, <a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_1" name="endnote_back_1">1</a> and is seated in an upholstered chair at a table on which rests the copperplate, raised towards him on an angled surface covered with a green cloth. The right hand edge of West’s composition, shown as if it was the full-size original painting, is shown in the background to the left. Wollett’s left hand grasps lightly around the near edge of the plate; in his right hand, resting on the plate itself, is an engraving tool (burin). Woollett’s body and face are turned slightly to face the viewer; he looks directly out of the canvas, as if momentarily distracted from his work.</p>
<p>The painting was among the nine by the American painter Gilbert Stuart included in the group exhibition of the Incorporated Society of Artists in London in 1783. This was at a time that the Society’s annual exhibitions were greatly overshadowed by those held by the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House. Stuart had trained with the Scottish painter Cosmo Alexander (1724–72) in his native Rhode Island and in Scotland, and had arrived in London in 1775. He was taken into West’s studio (and home) as a paid assistant and pupil in 1777. Stuart had exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1777 and 1779, but without critical notice. He had shown works much more successfully at the Academy in 1781 and 1782, including in the latter year his famous portrait of <i>The Skater </i>(National Gallery of Art, Washington), which he later claimed was the single picture responsible for his professional break-through. He was to return to exhibiting with the Academy in 1784, so the decision to show at this relatively marginal exhibition space was presumably reflected some temporary disagreement with the institution or was intended to be strategic (allowing Stuart to shine among the generally lesser talents on show at the Society).<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_2" name="endnote_back_2">2</a> The picture, shown under the published title of ‘Portrait of an Artist’, was, therefore, one of a sequence of works (also including <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/stuart-benjamin-west-p-r-a-n00229" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00229</span></a>) created by Stuart with the intention of establishing his public reputation. It reviewed very positively as among the highlights of the Incorporated Society’s show in 1783. <i>The St James’s Chronicle</i> (25–27 May 1783) identified the sitter as Wollett and remarked that it was ‘the man himself’ and though ‘a very slight picture … a better resemblance was never painted’. <i>The London Chronicle</i> (29 April– 1 May 1783) concluded, ‘Stuart’s portraits promise a great future increase of merit’. Like other portraits by Stuart from the early and mid-1780s, when he was establishing himself as an independent artist, the painting makes use of a strident and distinctive colour scheme. In this case, the distinctiveness of the portrait lies largely in the emphatic red of the sitter’s voluminous costume, decisively contrasted with the green cuffs of the banyan, and the matching green of the upholstery and of the cloth underneath the copperplate, all conveyed through the assertive manipulation of paint with broad and visible brushwork.</p>
<p>The painting originated as a commission from the London print publisher John Boydell (1720–1804). It was one of a series of fifteen portraits of contemporary painters and engravers commissioned from Gilbert Stuart by Boydell in 1782, and designed to be exhibited together as a gallery of portraits to accompany the display of John Singleton Copley’s <i>Death of Major Peirson</i> (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/copley-the-death-of-major-peirson-n00733" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00733</span></a>) in Boydell’s newly expanded gallery space upstairs at his premises at 90 Cheapside in London.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_3" name="endnote_back_3">3</a> Three oval paintings by Stuart, of Josiah Boydell (the publisher’s nephew and an artist; perhaps the painting at the Holbourne Museum of Art, Bath),<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_4" name="endnote_back_4">4</a> John Singleton Copley (National Portrait Gallery, London) and the engraver James Heath (Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford CT) were designed to be set into the elaborate frame of the <i>Death of Peirson</i>.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_5" name="endnote_back_5">5</a> Other pictures on more conventional three-quarter length formats, including the present work, were to hang nearby. Copley’s painting was first shown in its ornate frame at Boydell’s gallery in 1784; the gallery was unveiled in its complete form with the other twelve portraits by Stuart late in 1786. Besides the three oval pictures and the present canvas, the other portraits included images of the engravers Johann Gottlieb Facius (Charles and Emma Frye Art Museum, Seattle), John Hall (transferred from the Tate Gallery to the National Portrait Gallery in 1957), John Browne, William Miller, G.S. Facius, Richard Earlom and William Sharp (current location unknown);<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_6" name="endnote_back_6">6</a> the marine painter Richard Paton (private collection), the portrait painter Ozias Humphry (Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford CT),<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_7" name="endnote_back_7">7</a> Sir Joshua Reynolds (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Benjamin West (National Portrait Gallery, London) and John Boydell himself (unlocated). Wollett’s portrait seems to be conceived as a partner of sorts to the image of Hall, in its closely mirroring composition, the engraver before another of West’s celebrated paintings of Anglo-American history, <i>William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians</i> (1772).<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_8" name="endnote_back_8">8</a> Throughout the series, Stuart exhibits a greater concern with colouristic effect and tonal balance than with individual expression. In 1804 a writer in the <i>Monthly Magazine</i> complained of the paintings as a group: ‘more uninteresting vapid countenances it is not easy to imagine: neither dignity, elevation, or grace, appear in any of them; and had not the catalogue given their names, they might have passed for a company of cheesemongers and grocers’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_9" name="endnote_back_9">9</a>
</p>
<p>A writer in <i>The Morning Post</i> (14 November 1786) described the original display:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>The inner room is now furnished wholly with modern paintings – around it on the top the portraits of the most eminent English artists, whose works have been purchased, and engraved from by the Alderman, or of engravers, whom he hath at different times employed to engrave for him – They are strong likenesses, and by Stuart.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_10" name="endnote_back_10">10</a>
</blockquote>
<p>A German visitor, Sophie von la Roche, also visited Boydell’s shop around this time and gave a detailed account of the gallery displays, including the ‘portraits of famous English painters, especially engravers’, noting that ‘I liked Woollett best of all’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_11" name="endnote_back_11">11</a> The painting was still on show in Cheapside towards the end of 1788 when the young painter Martin Archer Shee saw them, though he reckoned the series ‘not the best pictures I have seen of Stewart’s [sic]’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_12" name="endnote_back_12">12</a> Stuart’s portraits appear subsequently to have been transferred for display at the home of Boydell’s new venture, The Shakespeare Gallery, in Pall Mall, which had opened in 1789. They were listed in the catalogues of 1790 and 1791 as groups of ‘Portraits of Engravers’ and ‘Portraits of Painters’, with the addition to the latter of self-portraits by William Hogarth (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-the-painter-and-his-pug-n00112" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00112</span></a>), James Northcote and John Opie and a picture identified as William Hogarth’s portrait of Sir James Thornhill.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_13" name="endnote_back_13">13</a> In the Preface to the 1790 catalogue of the Shakespeare Gallery Boydell alluded to ‘several pictures now added not connected with the Shakespeare plan’ which were, however, ‘painted on the same principal, upon which this great Work was originally undertaken - A desire of promoting and Historical School of Painting in England’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_14" name="endnote_back_14">14</a> Stuart’s portrait series, together with the epic canvas by Copley of Peirson’s heroic death during battle (Tate <span>N00733</span>), can then be interpreted as a concerted effort to promote a British School of art.</p>
<p>The portrait series appears to have on show at the Shakespeare Gallery temporarily, and was removed to the Boydell shop and gallery at 90 Cheapside by 1793.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_15" name="endnote_back_15">15</a> At least some (if not all) of the Stuart paintings passed with the stock from 90 Cheapside from Boydell to his business successors, Hurst Robinson &amp; Co and then Henry Graves (1806–92) of the print publishers Moon Graves &amp; Boys who took over the business in 1826.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_16" name="endnote_back_16">16</a> The portrait of Woollett was exhibited by the firm in a mixed exhibition of historic and contemporary British art at the Suffolk Street Gallery in London in the winter of 1832–33, presumably with a view to selling it: a sceptical contemporary reviewer noted that the show featured among its five hundred exhibits ‘numerous pictures from the studies of Artists, the back parlours of picture dealers, and the shops of printsellers, in the way of trade’ (<i>Observer</i>, 11 November 1832). It passed to the Maidstone banker and collector John Newington Hughes (1778?–1848) at or after this date.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_17" name="endnote_back_17">17</a> It featured in the posthumous sale of his collection at Christies in 1848, at which time a newspaper writer urged that as ‘a clever, and above all a characteristic, portrait of an English engraver, whose works are bought at large prices not by English alone but by European collectors’ the picture should be in any projected national gallery of British art.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_18" name="endnote_back_18">18</a> The painting was given to the National Gallery in 1849 by the picture dealer and restorer Henry Farrer (1798–1866) on those terms, with the opinion given by the donor that it is a ‘National work . . . of great interest to Englishmen’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_19" name="endnote_back_19">19</a> The painting was being shown at the National Gallery's display of the British collections at Marlborough House in the 1850s, where it received particular notice in an unofficial guide-book:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>This is a fine likeness of the great Engraver. Woollett who was opposed to the Royal Academy knew where to find a Painter unconnected with that Society far superior to most of its members. The Artist has accomplished an admirable combination of intelligent expression with plebeian but not unpleasing features; the colouring is rich sunny and harmonious and the whole effect remarkably broad and picturesque, the light playing naturally over the face and across the red silk dress lined with white. A little more firmness in parts, would have well sustained the animation of the countenance and of the general combination.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_20" name="endnote_back_20">20</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The same guide referred to Stuart's portrait of John Hall, also on display, as a ‘companion’ work. The painting of Wollett was being hung in a corresponding position with the portrait of John Hall but both ‘rather out of sight’ when it was included in the new hang of British art at the National Gallery in 1876.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_21" name="endnote_back_21">21</a> In 1883 the painting was deposited with the National Portrait Gallery, but was returned to the National Gallery by 1923 when it attracted new critical notices. A writer in an American magazine wrote in that year:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>I was walking through the National Gallery, London, last week when, in the great room, I suddenly saw a newcomer upon the walls. It was a sparkling, bold portrait of a man in a red turban, clothed in a gown of lighter red, seated at a sloping table, covered with a green cloth upon which is an engraving plate. The face of this man with the shrewd, brown, kindly eyes, is beautifully drawn and modeled, and the rich, juicy paint of his dress is a delight. So frankly and sportively is the paint handled, that I thought at first it was by Hogarth.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_22" name="endnote_back_22">22</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The presence of Stuart’s portrait in the National Gallery ‘in a place of honor among the Hogarths’ marked, for this writer, ‘the increasing repute of Gilbert Stuart in the art world today’. Another literary reviewer in 1926 could note the picture in the context of artist’s ‘direct business-like approach’ which he identified as characteristically American:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>Visitors to the British section of the National Gallery may sometimes have stopped, in the long room with the Gainsborough and Reynolds, before a portrait of a plump gentleman in a red silk robe and Hogarthian headdress by name of William Woollett. Although the portrait is not a masterpiece, the head is drawn very directly and the colour scheme and composition are fresh and unaffected.There is altogether an attractive simplicity and straight-forwardness about the portrait which arouses curiosity concerning the painter, Gilbert Stuart.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_23" name="endnote_back_23">23</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The painting was subsquently transferred to the Tate Gallery in 1949.</p>
<p>West’s painting of <i>The Death of General Wolfe</i> was one of the most acclaimed and influential images of the age. First shown at the Royal Academy in 1771, the painting represented the death on the battlefield of a British general, James Wolfe, at the moment of British victory against the French at the battle of Quebec in Canada in 1759. That battle helped mark a decisive turn in Britain’s fortunes within the Seven Years’ War, the long, world-wide conflict which ultimately saw Britain become the supreme global power. Wollett’s engraving was published in January 1776, co-published by himself with Boydell and another engraver and print publisher, William Wynne Ryland. It was hugely commercially successful, and has been identified as one of the key productions which helped establish an independent British print market in the late eighteenth-century.</p>
<p>West’s composition became, in effect, the template for images of heroic military sacrifice for the coming decades, including Copley’s <i>Death of Peirson</i> (<span>N00733</span>).<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_24" name="endnote_back_24">24</a> Although Woollett is shown by Stuart as if seated in front of the full-size painting, this had been purchased from the artist by Lord Grosvenor. A further version of the composition had been commissioned by George III, and West produced at least three more full-size versions.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_25" name="endnote_back_25">25</a> If paintings were certainly borrowed by engravers of the time to aid the completion of their plates, meaning that Stuart’s painting accords with contemporary practice, it is also recorded that Boydell owned a small version of the composition in oil, now unlocated but apparently ‘painted for the plate’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_26" name="endnote_back_26">26</a> Moreover, Stuart has cropped the original composition, so that West’s figure of a standing grenadier appears much closer to the right-hand edge of the canvas than in the actual painting. Rather than proposing to be an accurate record of an engraver’s practice, the painting offers an idealised representation of this famous printmaker at work on his most esteemed production  – a picture which had, moreover, distinctively nationalistic associations.</p>
<p>Stuart’s portrait of Woolett achieved its own celebrity: it was copied and reproduced a number of times. Commenting on the work when it was displayed in 1783, the<i> St James’s Chronicle</i> (25–27 May 1783) noted, ‘If Mr Woollett would oblige the public with a print from it he would find them not ungrateful’. No such print is known to have been started, but an etching of Woollett, in a very similar pose to that used by Stuart (but in reverse) was issued by John Keyse Sherwin in 1784. Stuart’s painting was subsequently reproduced in stipple by Caroline Watson, and published as ‘Mr William Woollett, the Engraver’ by Boydell in September 1785. Watson’s watercolour version of this portrait on vellum (changing the colour of the banyan to green) was presumably prepared to facilitate the production of this print, and is in the British Museum (1868–08–08–3038). Another copy of the portrait in watercolour by Henry Edridge (1769–1821) is in the same collection (1845–08–18–2). A pencil and wash drawing by the sculptor William Behnes (1794–1864) is in the British Library (possibly created as a study towards an historical portrait bust).<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_27" name="endnote_back_27">27</a> In 1981 the Tate Gallery was approached about a small oil painting on wood, which was stated to be a ‘study’ for the present picture: this is now unlocated.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_28" name="endnote_back_28">28</a> At a further remove, according to C.F. Bell it was Stuart’s likeness that was used as the basis of the portrait included in Thomas Banks’ wall-mounted memorial to the engraver erected in the west walks of the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey in 1792.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_29" name="endnote_back_29">29</a>
</p>
<p>Martin Myrone<br/>August 2013</p>
<p>
<b>Notes</b>
</p>
<div class="endnotes">
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_1" name="endnote_1">1</a><span> See Carrie Rebora Barratt, ‘Oriental Undress and the Artist’, <i>Porticus: Journal of the Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester</i>, vol.20, 2000, pp.18–26. Barratt notes that such costume displayed ‘rather nebulous Oriental influence’ and that ‘it carried with it no distinct rules of use’, so the term was interchangeable with nightgown. Earlier examples of an artists wearing turbans or nightgowns include Jonathan Richardson’s portrait of his son, c.1734 (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/richardson-portrait-of-the-artists-son-jonathan-richardson-the-younger-in-his-study-t13207" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T13207</span></a>) and Hogarth’s self–portrait (<span>N00112</span>), and, as discussed by Barratt, Copley’s portrait of the engraver Nathaniel Hurd (c.1765; Cleveland Museum of Art), which similarly emphasises the physical bulk of the sitter. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_2" name="endnote_2">2</a><span> William T. Whitley, <i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, Cambridge MA 1932, pp.36–7, p.52.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_3" name="endnote_3">3</a><span> See Whitley, <i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, p.55; Susan Rather, ‘Stuart and Reynolds: A Portrait of Challenge’, <i>Eighteenth Century Studies</i>, vol.27, 1993, pp.61–84; Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, <i>Gilbert Stuart</i>, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2004, pp.48–50 and nos.10–14.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_4" name="endnote_4">4</a><span> Ellen G. Miles, <i>American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century</i>:<i> The Collections of the National Gallery of Art</i>, Washington 1995, p.176, n.5.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_5" name="endnote_5">5</a><span> Eileen Harris, ‘Robert Adam’s Ornaments for Alderman Boydell’s Picture Frames’, <i>Furniture History</i>, vol.26, 1990, pp.93–6.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_6" name="endnote_6">6</a><span> The portrait of Facius was referred to as ‘in the possession of Moon and Co’ in 1829 (<i>A Catalogue of Engravings by the Most Esteemed Artists after The Finest Pictures and Drawings of the Schools of Europe … Forming Part of the Stock of Moon, Boys, and Graves</i>, London 1829, p.93). A portrait identified as Stuart’s likeness of Facius appeared at Sotheby’s New York, 25 May 1994, lot.15. Portraits identified as by Stuart and of William Miller and William Sharp have also featured at auction (Doyle New York, 17 April 1991, lot 3 and Rago Auctions, 6 December 2008, lot 95, respectively).</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_7" name="endnote_7">7</a><span> Note, however, Dorinda Evans’s suggestion that an unfinished three quarter–length portrait of the same artist by Stuart may have been originally intended for the series (Dorinda Evans, ‘Gilbert Stuart and Manic Depression: Redefining his Artistic Range’, <i>American Art</i>, vol.18, 2004, pp.17–18). Robert Adam’s designs for the frame (repr. Harris, ‘Robert Adam’s Ornaments’) clearly indicate only three spaces for oval portraits, and given the format of the known portraits from the rest of the series it seems a fair assumption that they would all have been on standard portrait canvases. </span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_8" name="endnote_8">8</a><span> Helmut Von Erffa and Allen Staley, <i>The Paintings of Benjamin West</i>, New Haven and London 1986, no.85, p.207, reproduced. </span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_9" name="endnote_9">9</a><span> <i>Monthly Magazine</i>, vol.17, 1804, p.595. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_10" name="endnote_10">10</a><span> Quoted in Hermann Arnold Bruntjen, <i>John Boydell (1719–1804): A Study in Art Patronage and Publishing in Georgian London</i>, Ann Arbor and London 1979, p.58 n.41. </span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_11" name="endnote_11">11</a><span> Clare Williams (trans.), <i>Sophie in London 1786</i>, London 1933, pp.237–9.</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_12" name="endnote_12">12</a><span> Martin Archer Shee to his brother, 7 November 1788, in Martin Archer Shee, <i>The Life of Sir Martin Archer Shee</i>, 2 vols, London 1860, vol.1, p.108, cited in Martin Davies, <i>National Gallery Catalogues: The British School</i>, London 1946, p.145.</span>
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<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_13" name="endnote_13">13</a><span> <i>A Catalogue of the Pictures &amp;c in the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall–Mall</i>, London 1790, p.143; also published 1791. </span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_14" name="endnote_14">14</a><span> ‘Advertisement’, dated 15 March 1790, in <i>A Catalogue of the Pictures, &amp;c in the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall–Mall</i>, London 1793, p.xiii.</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_15" name="endnote_15">15</a><span> They were not listed in <i>A Catalogue of the Pictures &amp;c in the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall–Mall</i>, London 1796. The edition of the catalogue from 1793 includes a note to the 1790 preface stating, ‘The Pictures and Drawings here alluded to’ (as not connected to the ‘Shakespeare Plan’) are now in the Gallery of Mess. Boydell, No 90, Cheapside’ (<i>A Catalogue of the Pictures &amp;c in the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall–Mall</i>, London 1793, p.xii n.). </span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_16" name="endnote_16">16</a><span> Miles, <i>American Paintings</i>, p.176 and p.176 n.23 notes that besides the portrait of Reynolds, catalogued there, the portraits of John Hall and Benjamin West (National Portrait Gallery, London) and James Heath (Wadsworth Atheanaeum) can be traced to Henry Graves. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_17" name="endnote_17">17</a><span> On Hughes and his collecting see <i>Gentleman’s Magazine</i>, February 1848, pp.21.</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_18" name="endnote_18">18</a><span> <i>Daily News</i>, 13 April 1848.</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_19" name="endnote_19">19</a><span> Henry Farrer to the Trustees of the National Gallery, London, March 1849 (noted on verso as read 5 March 1849), National Gallery Archive, NG 3/217/1. Also NG 6/1 Letter Book 1826–1851, p.309 (letter to Henry Farrer, 6 March 1849). On Farrer see Jacob Simon’s online directory of <i>British Picture Restorers, 1630–1950</i> (<a href="http://www.npg.org/research/programmes.directory-of-british-picture-restorers.php">www.npg.org/research/programmes.directory–of–british–picture–restorers.php</a>). </span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_20" name="endnote_20">20</a><span> <i>The Turner Gallery; With a Catalogue of the Vernon Collection, of Painting and Sculpture, now on View at Marlborough House</i>, London ?1857.</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_21" name="endnote_21">21</a><span> Henry Blackburn, <i>Pictorial Notes in the National Gallery: The British School</i>, London 1877, p.56.</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_22" name="endnote_22">22</a><span> ‘Appreciator’ (pseud.), ‘Artists who Matter LVII – Gilbert Stuart’, <i>International Interpreter</i>, vol.2, April–September 1923, pp.344–5 (p.344).</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_23" name="endnote_23">23</a><span> ‘The Fine Arts’,<i> London Mercury</i>, vol. 15, 1926–27, p.90.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_24" name="endnote_24">24</a><span> See von Erffa and Staley, <i>Paintings of Benjamin West</i>, no.93, citing earlier literature.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_25" name="endnote_25">25</a><span> Ibid, nos. 94–6, 98.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_26" name="endnote_26">26</a><span> ibid, no.100, quoting Christie’s sale catalogue of 26 February 1791. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_27" name="endnote_27">27</a><span> British Library, Tab.438.1.1 (6.37), part of an extra-illustrated copy of Walter Thornbury’s <i>Life of J.M.W. Turner</i> (1862) compiled by John Platt (1842–1902). </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_28" name="endnote_28">28</a><span> Letter from Grant M. Scruggs, New Jersey, 7 February 1981 in Tate Archive, Gilbert Stuart, Artist’s Catalogue File (<span>A24653</span>)</span>
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<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_29" name="endnote_29">29</a><span> C.F. Bell, <i>Annals of Thomas Banks</i>, Cambridge 1938, p.82. Bell refers to Stuart’s portrait being in the National Portrait Gallery, and notes that a separate ‘Bust of Woollett the Engraver’ was included in Banks’s posthumous sale in 1805.</span>
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Catalogue entry
2013-12-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults art and craft artist, printmaker arts and entertainment clothing and personal items drawing engraving / etching plate fine art and design, named works fine arts and music hat individuals: male leisure and pastimes man named individuals objects people portraits printmaking West, Benjamin, painting, ‘The Death of General Wolfe’ Woollet, William work and occupations