This study will examine the lives of painters Gilbert Stuart and Rembrandt, and will focus on a description and comparison of two portraits by those painters, Stuart's "Ann Penn Allen" and Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Young Woman." The study will first present brief biographical backgrounds of the two painters and will then offer descriptions and comparisons of those two portraits.
Stuart was born in 1755 near Newport, Rhode Island, and died in 1828. He spent his early years in Newport, and approximately 1769 began studying under Cosmo Alexander, who was a Scottish portrait painter. Stuart returned with Alexander in 1772, and returned to Newport after his teacher's death. He returned to Britain to paint during the Revolution in the United States, studying under Benjamin West. He moved to Dublin from London in 1787 where he remained, living on portrait commissions until 1792, when he returned to New York in 1793. He became famous upon his return, painting, among others, George Washington.
Stuart had a career of over forty years, producing "an extraordinary number of portraits, recording nearly all the prominent men and women of his time" (Gardner & Feld 79).
Rembrandt was born in 1606 and died in 1669. He spent the first half of his life, roughly, in Leyden, where he was born, moving to Amsterdam, where he became the most famous and popular artist of his time and place. Three years after moving to Amsterdam, he married. After his wife's death in 1642, he diverged dramatically from the style and approach he had demonstrated in the works that had made him popular and famous, and as a result of that divergence (in the work "Sortie of the Banning Cicq) he lost his popularity among those who felt betrayed. His downfall led to bankruptcy in 1657. In his last years he was supported by his son and his housekeeper. Roger Marx writes that "Without falling into that utter despair and poverty exaggerated in the romantic biogra...