In 1804, Stuart painted portraits of Jerome Bonaparte, the youngest and favorite brother of Napolean, Emperor of France, and of Robert Gilmor I, a leading merchant in America at the time and the father of Baltimorean Robert Gilmor the art collector. The story around Jerome Bonaparte is a fascinating one for Baltimore history: Jerome, a naval officer, fell in love with Betsy Patterson of Baltimore on a visit to America; he married here in Baltimore in 1803, and they had a son, Jerome Bonaparte, who was born in England in 1805. Napolean wished to marry his brother to a member of a royal family, so annulled the marriage between Jerome and Betsy; Betsy and son Jerome returned to Baltimore where Jerome was to become a prominent citizen. Legend has it that the elder Jerome Bonaparte ordered Gilbert Stuart to complete his portrait quickly at the expense the completion of Stuart's other work, and Stuart refused so that the Bonaparte portrait was never completed.

Largely untrained as an artist in his youth, the young Gilbert Stuart took up painting portraits largely on his own. Later, he traveled to London where he studied under the eminent painter Benjamin West. Stuart opened a studio in London where he found much interest in his portraiture. Among his sitters were George III and the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, and in France he painted Louis XVI. He returned to this country about 1792 in order to paint portraits of George Washington. He did three from life and a number of replicas, working in New York, Philadelphia and Washington. He never finished one of the portraits, nor did he part with it during his life; this famous "Athenaeum," or head, portrait now resides in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Selected References: Pleasants, J. Hall. Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting in Maryland (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art), 1945.
Maryland Institutions Holding Artworks: Baltimore Museum of Art; Maryland Historical Society; Walters Art Museum