Busacca Gallery

Artist Julius S. Stewart “A Portrait” Antique Photogravure Circa 1887 Signed in plate 18” x 14” (matted) Julius L. Stewart, artist 1855-1919 Goupil and Co., printer D. Appleton & Company, publisher. Active 1831-1933 A Portrait, 1893 photogravure Transfer from Kenneth Spencer Research Library. American Painter, 1855-1919 American artist, was born in Philadelphia. His father, William Hood Stewart, was a distinguished collector of the fine arts, an early patron of Fortuny and the Barbizon artists, and lived in Paris during the latter part of his life. The son was a pupil of JL Gerome, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and of Raymondo de Madrazo. Among his principal paintings are The Hunt Ball, Essex Club, Newark, New Jersey. Although he resides permanently in Paris, America claims Julius L. Stewart as one of her own artists, on the score of birth. He was born in Philadelphia. His father was a banker, who settled in Paris to conduct the European business of his banking house, and his son was educated in Paris. The banker Stewart was a great art-lover, and one of the very first patrons in France of Fortuny, Raimond de Madrazo, and Zamacois, for he was especially fond of the brilliant and audacious modern Spanish school. As young Stewart positively declined to be made a banker, and asserted his intention to become a painter, he was given his course. He had probably been inspired to his resolution by the artistic surroundings of his father's house. At any rate, he studied under Zamacois, Madrazo, and Gerome, but his innate talent broke a path for itself, and his later works suggest none of his masters. He created a style of his own which has been received in Paris, London, and America as thoroughly original. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1878, and since then has received many awards of merit. His "A Portrait" is one of his higher compositions, and was painted for a decorative purpose.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_LeBlanc_Stewart

Julius LeBlanc Stewart (September 6, 1855, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - January 5, 1919, Paris, France), was an American artist who spent his career in Paris. A contemporary of fellow expatriate painter John Singer Sargent, Stewart was nicknamed "the Parisian from Philadelphia. His father, the sugar millionaire William Hood Stewart, moved the family to Paris in 1865, and became a distinguished art collector and an early patron of Fortuny and the Barbizon artists. Julius studied under Eduardo Zamacois as a teenager, under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux Arts, and later was a pupil of Raymondo de Madrazo. Stewart's family wealth enabled him to live a lush expatriate life and paint what he pleased, often large-scaled group portraits. The first of these, After the Wedding (1880), showed the artist's brother Charles and his bride Mae, daughter of financier Anthony J. Drexel, leaving for their honeymoon. Subsequent group portraits depicted his friends — including actresses, celebrities and aristocrats — often with a self-portrait somewhere in the crowd. He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1878 into the early 20th century, and help organize the Americans in Paris section of the 1894 Salon.