This canvas is more than a portrait: it is a picture; and it is this picture quality in portraiture that makes the English school, to which Stuart essentially belonged, so easily the greatest school of portraiture the world has ever seen. Stuart has also given us in this work a glimpse, in he view of the Delaware's banks, of what he might have accomplished had he turned his brush to landscape art, as did his co-worker, Gainsborough.  Cosmo Alexander, with whom Stuart went to Scotland in 1773, died not long after reaching Edinburgh, and Stuart was left, according to his biographer,. in the care of Alexander's friend Sir George Chambers, who "quickly followed Alexander to the grave," leaving Stuart without protection. But this story is without foundation, as there was no Sir George Chambers at the period considered.  There was, however, a Scotch painter of some repute, Sir George Chalmers of Cults, who had married either a sister or a daughter of Cosmo Alexander; and this Sir George Chalmers is doubtless the person intended, although he lived on until 1791, so that it could not have been his demise that left Stuart to his own resources, which, being few, necessitated Stuart's working his way home on a Nova Scotian collier, after only a few months' absence. The circumstances connected with this episode in Stuart's early life were of such a painful character that his daughter says he could never be induced to talk about it; and while no direct advantage seems to have been gained from this brief visit, the atmosphere of more cultivated lands certainly gave him a broader vision and purer taste for art.


              I had hoped to have some additional informatiion to offer about these Penningtons and the Wister connections (which have also been attached to Abraham Pennington, who is said to have maarried a Katerina/ Catherine Weister.)  but I haven't time to devote to  the research at this time.  If anyone has further information, I would appreciate hearing from you. 

              The copyright of the painting  is held by  (according to a Gilbert Stuart site I visited) Copyright Held by the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks,  Howell House    (This being a copy of an engraving  published in a magazine in 1898, it is not subject to the copyright for the painting.)  Morris Miller's family was related to the expatriate artist, Benjamin West, who became a sort of patron for Gilbert Stuart while he was in London.  After some years of living in London, Stuart returned to America, and became very well known for his portraits of wealthy, well-positioned persons of the time.  He painted three portraits of George Washington, one of Martha Washington, among others. 

The Morris Miller Family          The Quaker Connection    The Philadelphia Perimeter      

Virginia Migrations     Early Pennington Oirgins      Burying  Mary Elkton  

The National Gallery: OTHER WORKS BY GILBERT STUART        OLD PHILADELPHIA 

Cecil County, Maryland:  Where Our Mothers and Fathers Lie Buried

The Boone Family   by Bill Scroggins                  Fanny Saltar's Colonial Philadelphia
   
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The American Crossroads  Philadelphia  Perimeter Collection will include information on a variety of families, among them, Pennington, Miller, Morris, Borden, Smart, Thompso, Davis, Evan, Moore, Graham, Bryan, Beall, McDaniel/McDonald, King Boone, Morgan, Shoemaker, Burgess,  Watts, .......