also painted by Stuart.

_Two Portraits by_ GILBERT STUART

_reproduced by permission of_

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

_Printed from plates made by the Colorplate Engraving Company, New York_

[Illustration: _Dona_ MATILDE STOUGHTON DE JAUDENES _Wife of the First
Minister from_ SPAIN _to the_ UNITED STATES]

[Illustration: _Don_ JOSEF DE JAUDENES Y NEBOT _First Minister from_
SPAIN _to the_ UNITED STATES]

Having thus disposed (somewhat unsatisfactorily, it is true) of the
personality of the sitters, we can turn to the portraits themselves. The
accompanying reproductions make extended description unnecessary. They
are characteristic Stuarts, more elaborate, more complete, than most of
his subsequent work, but showing clearly his personal point of view
and the difference between his portraits and those of his
contemporaries. He is less poetic, more literal than the rivals with
whom he had contended, not unsuccessfully, for the patronage of London
society. For him a pretty girl is a pretty girl, and it is enough. He
seats her comfortably in a chair and paints her as she is. One cannot
imagine him turning her into a nymph, a shepherdess, or a priestess of
Hymen, or painting her with a very modish coiffure on her head and a
pair of blue-ribboned sandals on her bare feet. These things Reynolds
did habitually and moreover put his figures in attitudes with up-rolled
eyes and extended arms and filled out his larger canvases with altars
and tombs and allegorical attributes. This he did to bring his pictures
in accord with those of the old masters whom he laboriously studied and
deeply admired. His achievement fully justified him. His sumptuous
canvases, rich in color, elaborate in composition, perfected with every
technical resource, have ever since remained unequalled of their kind.

In spite of his stay in West's studio, Stuart had none of this respect
for tradition nor any wish to attempt the grand style. In this he was
more like Gainsborough, but Gainsborough invested his portraits, even of
prosaic sitters, with a strange, penetrating, poetic charm such as no
other painter has been able to convey. Ranking artists in the order of
their merit is an unprofitable business, but it may gratify some
methodical minds to have it stated that these canvases by Stuart are not
in the same class as good Gainsboroughs or Reynolds. With the best of
other contemporary portraits they stand approximately on a footing of