(1713 - 88), architect and painter, s. of a Scottish sailor, b. London; assisted the painter Lewis Goupy; Dilettanti 1751; FRS and FSA by 1762; published with Nicholas Revett the Antiquities of Athens [1762 - ]; exh. Free SA 1765 - 83; painter to the Dilettanti 1763 - 8; sergeant painter in Office of Wks. 1764 - 80.
1742 - 51 Rome (1742 - ), Naples (Apr. 1748), Rome (1748 - Mar. 1750), Venice (May 1750 - 19 Jan. 1751)
Having worked in London with the decorative artist Lewis Goupy, Stuart set out in 1742 for Rome to study art and learn languages.1 He is said to have walked much of the way, and to have earned his living as an itinerant fan painter in Venice and other cites with Matthew Nulty.2 He may also have acted as a cicerone in Rome, where he met Revett, from whom 'Mr Stuart first caught the ideas of [architecture], in which (quitting the painter's art), he afterwards made so conspicuous a figure'.3 (It has recently been supposed that he may have been the 'Stewart'/'Stuart' whom Richard Pococke met in Naples in December 1740, see George Belsches).
Stuart's erudition and his growing ability as an engraver were shown by his publication in Rome in 1750 of the De obelisco Caesaris Augusti e Campe Martio nuperrime effosso / Epistola Jacopi Stuart Angli ad Carolum Wentworth, Comite de Malton; this was subsidised by Pope Benedict XIV, to whom Stuart was presented. It is curious that James Russel told his father in November 1749 that Stuart and Revett were 'not in the least vers'd, either in the Latin or Greek languages'.4 For further details, see Nicholas Revett.
1. See L. Lawrence, JWCI, 2[1938 - 9]:128 - 30. D. Watkin, Athenian Stuart, 14 - 15. 2. See M. Hopkinson, Burl.Mag., 132[1990]:794. Jones Memoirs, 74. 3. GM, 58[1788]:217. 4. Add.41169, f.39 (18 Nov. 1749).