Mary Campbell Stuart (c. 1815): Art, History and Details

Mary Campbell Stuart (c. 1815) 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:

Born in Rhode Island, Gilbert Stuart studied painting in London under fellow American expatriate Benjamin West (also in this gallery). He achieved great success as a fashionable portrait painter of high society, most famously George and Martha Washington. Here, he portrayed Mary Stuart (born Campbell), the great-granddaughter of Colonel Peter Bard, a New Jersey Supreme Court judge. She married Dr. James Stuart, whose portrait was also painted by Stuart (unrelated to the sitters). Both are shown seated in an Empire chair upholstered in brown brocade. Stuart painted the portrait pair on panel because the British naval blockade during the War of 1812 hindered the import of canvas, the artist’s preference.

Object facts

• Title: Mary Campbell Stuart
• Date: c. 1815
• Creator attribution: Gilbert Stuart (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1755–1828)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 102.2 x 85.1 x 10.2 cm (40 1/4 x 33 1/2 x 4 in.); Unframed: 83 x 65.7 cm (32 11/16 x 25 7/8 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1927.394.2

Collection credit

The Charles W. Harkness Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Paintings in the Harkness Gift." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 2, part 2 (February 1928): 51-57.

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.