Man in a Green Coat

Gilbert Stuart

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This portrait seems to have been begun as a rectangle and then changed to an oval format. It is one of Stuart’s most virtuosic paintings, clearly from his first years in London, but both its date and the identity of the sitter are unknown. The vague, brushy treatment of the background has raised the suggestion that the work is unfinished. Yet it seems rather to be inspired by Thomas Gainsborough, whose paintings the young American certainly saw and admired in England. Gainsborough also favored oval portraits and such light pastel colors as the pleasing green of the young sitter’s coat.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art