The Strange Discovery and Disappearance of Stuart’s Washington

ANTIQUE shops are isles of romance and mystery in the commonplace everyday life of New York, but if you wish to enter into the real thrill of adventure, you must forget the fashionable shop, where antiques have found a temporary resting place and you must not talk to the shop-keeper. Antique shops along Fifth Avenue and the main streets are conducted as up-to-date business places, and up-to-date business has a romance of its own, a twentieth century romance that has little to do with the individual and less with sacred time-honored traditions that touch the heart. Most antique dealers kill the charm their curios and works of art awaken in us.

They know the prices of the beautiful and ugly things on sale in their shops, but they don’t know their value. Antique dealers are painful whenever they try to impress you with their knowledge of art or of association or history, or when they simply play on the vanity of prospective customers, telling in whose possession the priceless object has been, quoting prices like stock brokers.

Whenever I spend some time in an antique shop I think of George Bernard Shaw’s essay: “On Going to Church”: “What wonderful and ideal places would churches be if there were no priests and no services to disturb the sublime quiet and the elevating beauty of the edifices.” What charming places for dreams and revery would antique shops be if there were no antique dealers and no ambitious millionaires, who wish to show their appreciation of art by paying exorbitant prices for art objects.

“Then the museum is an ideal place,” I hear you say. No, it isn’t. The museum is a mausoleum of art. The art objects there seem to me buried forever in costly catacombs with beautiful monuments and tombstones, but buried away from our world, separated from life forever; yet the beautiful things done by past generations should be a part of our own throbbing life.

The great antique dealers are not the high-priests of the beautiful in New York. Suave and well-meaning gentlemen; their words come not from their hearts and their love is tied to the price of their wares and not to their merit. Some of these gentlemen have sold shoes, shirts, furniture and cash registers before they went into the “antique business.” Works of art are mere merchandise to them. Money-changers they are in the temple, but the temple is theirs, too; no one ever can chase them out.

“Names” are their gods. Authenticity their dogma. The art of persuasion their greatest asset. To find big names (names that bring high auction prices) is their constant desire and to sell these names to the highest bidder at fabulous prices is their daily dream.

What do I care who painted a portrait? Perhaps it is a priceless Velasquez or Rubens or Botticelli or by some unknown artist of several hundred years ago? But I like to contemplate the person who sat for the portrait; the beautiful girl in her strange attire; I like to dream about the love, hatred, contempt, affection, about all the hopes and all the despair mutely witnessed by some old-fashioned writing cabinet with secret drawers and dozens of pigeon-holes, where once letters reposed that meant so much to the writers and recipients. I like to think of the soft, well-cared-for hands of some Prince of the church, who wore the beautiful Bishop’s ring hundreds of years old that will adorn perhaps tomorrow the jewel-case of an American millionairess.

There are divans and chairs.... Who used them? In whose home have they served? Where will they go to from here? The mystery and romance woven around all the various works of art and useful objects that have withstood the destructive powers of time and men is captivating. How did all these things get into the fashionable antique stores?

Most of them were purchased from other antique dealers; some were bought in auctions and obscure places and a few were purchased from another kind of antique dealer who are not very infrequent in New York.

Where there is mystery there are surely people who wish to solve the mystery, and very curious people are these “detectives of the antique.” The peripatetic antique dealers are in a true sense connoisseurs. They prowl about all sorts of out-of-the-way places; storage houses, auction rooms, in garrets of houses that will be torn down and in cellars of old family dwellings, unoccupied perhaps for generations. They sense the value of a thing the moment they see it. Some of them are scholarly gentlemen who have a great book knowledge, who know more than professors in our universities and curators of our museums. Others know by intuition. And a few have the instinct of a Sherlock Holmes and the sense of adventure of a pirate.

Some weeks ago I noted the following advertisement in the American Art News. It sounded mysterious as well as promising:

W A R N I N G! The Original Sketch of the Head for the Lansdowne Full Length

All Collectors, Museums, Dealers and other interested parties are advised to take no part in the buying or selling of a certain oil painting:—

Portrait of Washington, by Gilbert Stuart

This portrait head is entirely my personal property. It is now being held by a certain party without my consent, who refuses to return it to me. I wish to warn anyone interested that the present holder of it has not my permission to negotiate its sale and that he cannot deliver title.

Very respectfully, J. F. MacCARTHY.

339 Lexington Ave., N. Y. City.

Any portrait by Gilbert Stuart is worth from ten thousand dollars up. That there should be a new discovery of a Gilbert Stuart painting, especially one of George Washington, was a great surprise to me. And I know J. F. MacCarthy. He is one of those ideal antique dealers who could not help being one. Of course he sells the paintings, engravings and etchings he discovers, but I am sure he would prefer to keep them if circumstances did not compel him to earn a living, even as you and I. MacCarthy is a well-known figure in auction rooms all over town. He is well known down on Fourth Avenue, where old clothes, damaged shoes, cheap furniture is sold, together with works of art, tapestries, paintings, as well as in those fashionable auction rooms on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, which look like the orchestra of a theatre, where the visitors sit in comfortable plush chairs.

On Fourth Avenue, the auctioneers urge the people to buy, use all the tricks of their much-maligned trade to bring up the price a quarter of a dollar at a time. In the fashionable parts of the city, the auctioneers are well-posed orators who seem to beg the crowds not to buy because they will get so much better prices tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. These auctioneers are studies in themselves. At any rate they are excellent psychologists. And MacCarthy is their great friend. He knows perhaps more than they do. He gives them valuable pointers and he is such a pleasant chap to talk to because he knows stories and tells them well.

So I went up to his shop, which really is not a shop but a sort of connoisseur’s den, and asked him about the “ad” he inserted. “Tell me about it,” I cried. “Was the picture stolen from you? How did you ever get hold of a real Gilbert Stuart? How long have you had it? Why didn’t you ever show it and where is it now?”

MacCarthy is rather slow in his movements and in his speech. He settled himself comfortably in an old Chippendale chair, supposed to have been owned by General Beauregarde, and began in his epic manner:

“You did see the picture. I had it almost eight years. I had it long before I moved to Lexington Avenue. I bought it at the James Sutton sale. It was catalogued as a painting by Wertmuller, supposed to represent George Washington. Wertmuller was a Swiss painter of fame, who came to this country about 1790. Washington sat for him and later on he made several copies of the original portrait. His picture evidently didn’t interest the public very much during that sale and I bought it for little money. I had it in the shop for years. Many people looked at it, but not one seemed to pay any attention to it. It was not a good painting of Washington; the likeness was rather poor and the whole thing looked unfinished.

“One afternoon last year I was looking for some painting in my attic and there I ran across the Washington portrait. I took it downstairs to this room, where we are now sitting. I looked at it for a good long while, perhaps for the first time since I had bought it, and it struck me as strange that Wertmuller should have painted Washington’s eyes as brown, when everybody knows that Washington had blue eyes. The paint seemed very heavy in certain spots and the idea struck me that the whole portrait had been overpainted. I took a little solvent, touched up the eyes and you can imagine how astonished I was to see that the color came off.

“I was very careful, of course, but my interest was aroused. I spent the whole afternoon removing the paint from the eyes. My work was rewarded. Beautiful blue eyes were beneath the coat of paint. I tried the solvent on other parts of the picture and soon I found that the whole canvas had been overpainted. In the course of a week I had removed the entire coat of overpaint and beneath it was an entirely different painting.

“It was a beautiful portrait of Washington, but surely not the work of Wertmuller. I spent another week cleaning it and restoring the painting. It was unmistakably Gilbert Stuart, but it was entirely unlike any other Stuart picture of Washington.

“I at once went to the library and studied the work of Stuart, comparing carefully all paintings he had ever done with the one in my possession. The pose was exactly the same as that of his “Lansdowne” portrait.

“Lord Lansdowne was a very celebrated connoisseur who met Gilbert Stuart during the artist’s sojourn in London and commissioned him to paint a life-size portrait of General Washington in 1796. It is a matter of record that Gilbert Stuart executed this order under grave difficulties.

“France had sent innumerable painters to Mt. Vernon to paint the first President of the new Republic. Hundreds of artists from all parts of Europe came to America in order to paint Washington and on the strength of having painted Washington to receive commissions from the first families of America. Washington had grown tired of giving sittings to all these painters, some of whom were really great artists, but others second-rate craftsmen, who wished to build their reputations upon a Washington portrait painted from life. Gilbert Stuart begged Washington to sit for him again, but Washington had sworn off once for all. Then Stuart used his influence among Washington’s friends and finally Mrs. Bingham, a great favorite of George Washington in 1796 and also a great friend of the artist, succeeded.

“The following letter is on record in the Library of Congress:

“Sir:—I am under promise to Mrs. Bingham to sit for you tomorrow at nine o’clock, and wishing to know if it be convenient to you that I should do so, and whether it shall be at your own home (as she talked of the State House), I send this note to ask information. I am, sir, your obedient servant,”

“GEORGE WASHINGTON.”

“Monday evening, 11th April, 1796.”

“Stuart describes in a letter to Mrs. Bingham, Washington’s visit to his studio. The great man was nervous, ill-tempered and considered the whole thing an imposition upon his kindness.”

“I give you an hour,” he cried after entering the studio. “Tell me in what position you want me and do your work quickly. I am tired and I want to get back home.”

Washington’s nervousness proved contagious. Stuart became so nervous that he hardly knew what he was doing. He realized that he never could induce Washington to sit again, so he took a canvas and threw in hurriedly Washington’s face in broad strokes. He had set all his hopes upon this life-size portrait. He had made arrangements with a steel engraver to have the portrait engraved. He knew that everybody would buy a good portrait of Washington and that his success would not only crown his achievement as an artist but also make him financially independent for the rest of his life.

He made a color sketch of Washington’s features as well as he could. It was a short sketch of the head. Later on he engaged three different men to pose for the full length of the body. The Library of Congress retains the correspondence of Gilbert Stuart with Martha Washington, who loaned him a complete wardrobe of her husband, her husband’s sword and cape, to be worn by the models.

Stuart’s portrait not only pleased Lord Lansdowne but it became the portrait of General Washington. The steel engravings in life size were sold out the very week that they had been struck off. Millions of copies circulated all over the world. But the original sketch of the head was lost. Almost every work as well about Gilbert Stuart as about George Washington’s portrait contains the notice that the original sketch in colors of Lansdowne has been lost.

“My picture was that very sketch. I proved it conclusively. It would lead too far to tell you about the months of detective work I put in tracing back the proprietors of this painting for the last one hundred and fifty years. I was successful, and of course you can imagine how much the painting is worth.

“One day a well known art dealer of Philadelphia strolled into my shop and I told him the story as I have told it to you.

“‘I will sell the picture for you,’ he said. ‘Give me 50 per cent commission and I’ll sell it quickly.’

“I knew the man; he had sold very valuable paintings in the past. In fact, everybody in the art world knows him. I simply cried: ‘Go to it! Get me the best price that you can get.’

“He took the picture along with him and that is the last I ever heard of it. I let the matter rest for several months and then wrote him a letter requesting the return of the picture.

“His astounding answer came back: He claimed to be half owner of the painting; as I had let him in on the 50 per cent profit-sharing basis he refused to give up the painting.

“I went to my lawyer and my lawyer told me: ‘You are stung. That gentleman certainly did you. There are only two ways of action open for you. You either sue him for the value of the picture; no doubt you will get a judgment, but I doubt whether you will ever be able to collect on the judgment. And the minute that you sue for the money, you abandon automatically your proprietary rights to the painting. If you would know where the painting is you could replevin it.’”

“But do you know where it is?”

“I didn’t at the time. Finally this gentleman of Philadelphia made me a proposition to put the painting on sale in one of the most prominent art galleries of New York, who specialize in historic paintings and in old masters.

“The proposition was to pay this art dealer a commission of 20 per cent of the prospective purchase price. This proposition made me suspicious. It would mean 20 per cent to the art dealer; 40 per cent to the man of Philadelphia. Two votes against my one.

“I realized that I was helpless, therefore I inserted the advertisement. I at least wish to prevent him and his helpers to get the reward for my work, for my discovery and all the pains I took in establishing the identity of the portrait.”

I sympathize with MacCarthy. I wonder where Gilbert Stuart’s famous painting will find its last resting place?

1919