National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Ann Calvert Stuart Robinson (Mrs. William Robinson)
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

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Provenance

Gift of the sitter's sister, Eleanor Custis Stuart [b. 1796], Alexandria, Virginia, to her great-niece, Rebecca Lynn Webster [b. 1861], Rochester, New York;[1] (Jonce I. McGurk, New York); sold 5 August 1919 to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York);[2] purchased 3 March 1923 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[3] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1942 to NGA.

[1] Letter from Rebecca Lynn Webster, 5 August 1919, to Jonce I. McGurk, New York (typed copy, NGA curatorial file). For their relationship and dates of birth (dates of death are undetermined), see Robert Winder Johnson, The Ancestry of Rosalie Morris Johnson, Philadelphia, 1905, 30, 41. According to Jane Stuart, "The Stuart Portraits of Washington," in Scribner's Monthly 12 (July 1876), 373, the portrait was owned by Mrs. George Goldsborough, granddaughter of Mrs. Robinson's half-sister Mrs. Thomas Law. Lawrence Park, Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works, with an Account of his Life by John Hill Morgan and an Appreciation by Royal Cortissoz, 4 vols., New York, 1926, 650, states, however, that the painting was only on loan to Mrs. Goldsborough, who lived in Talbot County, Maryland.

[2] The dated receipt for McGurk's sale to Knoedler is in the NGA curatorial file.

[3] The Knoedler invoice dated 28 February 1923 is in the NGA curatorial file; the name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library).

Exhibition History

1879
Said to have been exhibited in 1789, according to Knoedler 1923 invoice and Park 1926, citing a label (no longer extant) on the back of the painting
1921
Early American Portraits, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1921, no. 6
1924
Exhibition of Portraits by Early American Portrait Painters, The Union League Club, New York, February 1924, no. 11.
1928
Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue.
1947
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1947.
1948
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1948.
1949
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1949.
1950
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1950.
1951
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1951.
1953
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1953.

Bibliography

1876
Stuart, Jane. "The Stuart Portraits of Washington." Scribner's Monthly 12, no. 3 (July 1876):373
1879
Mason, George C. The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart. New York, 1879: 250.
1880
MFA 1880, 53, no. 516
1914
"Virginia Gleaning in England." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 22, no. 2 (1914):22-24
1926
Park 1926, 649-650, no. 711, repro.
1928
Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unnumbered.
1950
Torbert, Alice Coyle. Eleanor Calvert and her Circle. New York, 1950:48, 62, 94, 102, 114, 119-123
1964
Mount 1964, 374
1970
American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 106, repro., as Mrs. William Robinson.
1980
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 234, repro., as Mrs. William Robinson.
1991
Callcott, Margaret Law, ed. Mistress of Riversdale; The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795-1821. Baltimore and London, 1991: 63, 70-71n, 80, 82-84n, 111-112, 199, 123-124, 163, 169, 176-177. 185-187
1992
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 355, repro., as Mrs. William Robinson.
1995
Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 246-249, color repro. 247.

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