Baron FitzGibbon (1789): Art, History and Details

Baron FitzGibbon (1789) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gilbert Stuart (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1755–1828).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A fearless politician who engineered the act of uniting Ireland with England, FitzGibbon was the newly appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland (whose duties included that of chief judge) when Stuart painted his portrait. The crownlike upper portion of FitzGibbon's mace, or ceremonial staff, is seen on the table at the right. Propped against the table is a satin and velvet purse embroidered with the royal coat of arms. Worn around the neck like an apron, the purse held the official texts of FitzGibbon's speeches. At the time he painted this work, Stuart was living in Dublin, having spent a dozen years in London. In fact, his Irish patrons regarded him as a British painter. Stuart returned to his native America in 1793, where he remained the rest of his life.

Object facts

• Title: Baron FitzGibbon
• Date: 1789
• Creator attribution: Gilbert Stuart (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1755–1828)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 272 x 181 x 11 cm (107 1/16 x 71 1/4 x 4 5/16 in.); Unframed: 245 x 154 cm (96 7/16 x 60 5/8 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1919.910

A detail from the museum

This portrait was painted on a large piece of textured linen, likely a tablecloth.

Collection credit

General Income Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Margaret C. Conrads, Lauren Lessing, and Randall R. Griffey. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. American Paintings to 1945. Vol. 1. Kansas City, Mo., Seattle, WA: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art ; Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2007.
• Knight Frank & Rutley. Catalogue of the Contents of the Mansion of Bedgebury. London: Knight Frank & Rutley, 1919.
• L. P. "Gilbert Stuart's Portrait of Lord Fitzgibbon." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 7, no. 1 (1920): 3-5.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.