phies, Rembrandt was nevertheless losing more and more of his clients. Fashion had left him behind. No longer was the start of a new canvass an event to be talked about nor for that matter, despite their continued success, that of new etchings" (Roger-Marx 9).
Stuart's portrait of Ann Penn Allen shows the viewer his vision of a personage who lived from 1769 to 1851, the daughter of James Allen, the founder of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the granddaughter of the chief justice of pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania. In addition, Ann Penn Allen was the great-granddaughter of Tench Francis, and was considered, as Gardner writes, "one of the most beautiful women in the country . . . The picture was painted in Philadelphia about 1795 [when Stuart was about forty years old]. It is a fine example of his brilliant and dashing brushwork" (Gardner 88).
What strikes the viewer first about the portrait of Allen is the softness of the colors and her dress, as well as the employment of light upon her skin. Mount writes with respect to these features of Stuart's painting: "Notable among (the special elements of Stuart's work) was a sensitivity to character . . . ; a desire to paint women in a flat, shadowless light to soften features and allow the artist to luxuriate in clear complexions . . . " (Mount 67).
Stuart in this painting demonstrated the ability he had shown in other portraits which broke
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