Gilbert Stuart

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Like many people of less note, Gilbert Stuart hated writing letters and was inexcusably negligent in his correspondence. For this reason his biographer lacks all that documentary material which since Boswell’s day has been the indispensable element in the art of biography. Nevertheless, William Whitley has been able to write a really “new” life of Stuart, because he has unearthed much hitherto neglected information contained in the English and American magazines and newspapers contemporary with the artist. It is altogether fitting that a biography of such importance should appear in the year of Washington celebrations, and that the man who more than any other has made George Washington live in our imagination should share honors with his famous subject.