Jane Stuart painting raffle list

Collection — Box: Multi 01

Identifier: MS-0081

Staff Only

Scope and Content Note

This collection contains a list of sixty raffle participants, at 5 dollars a ticket, for a painting of George Washington by Jane Stuart based on one by her father, Gilbert Stuart. Proceeds were to benefit “the Club” possible the Newport Reading Room. The raffle was held in Newport, Rhode Island in August 1868.

Dates

1868 August 31

Access restrictions

Collection is open for research.

Publication rights

Copyright has not been assigned to Washington College. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Archives and Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Washington College as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher.

Biographical Information Note

Jane Stuart (1812-1888) was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1812, the youngest surviving child of painter Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) and Charlotte Coates Stuart. The Stuart children had a typical childhood but were affected by their father’s mental illness. Gilbert believed that real talent did not need education and never gave his daughter lessons, Jane learned painting by watching her father and copying his paintings. She worked as his assistant, grinding his paints and filling in the backgrounds of his paintings. Later she would complete many of his unfinished paintings. When her father died, he left the family with very little. Jane supported her family, including many of her siblings who had stints of hospitalization due to mental illness, with her miniature paintings and full-sized paintings after her father’s style. Copies of his portraits of George Washington were especially popular. Along with replicating her father’s work she was a painter and portraitist in her own right. She maintained her studio in Boston but had moved her family to Newport, RI in 1831. After a studio fire, which destroyed much of her work, she relocated her studio to the family home in Newport she had purchased in 1863. After a short illness Jane passed away April 27, 1888.