Mr Stuart Spaulding Jr 1930
Image description Original: Casual half portrait of a young man with dark hair combed back, leaning against a wall, hands in his trouser pockets. He is wearing a black Club jacket with white piping with a club emblem on the breast pocket (probably from the exclusive Boston Tennis and Racket Club). Around the neck an intertwined white silk scarf with fringes.
JQAW# P_1930_230
Oil on canvas 75 x 65 cm (trimmed) ca. 120 x 80 cm (original)
Signature: no signature left
Unknown private collection.
William Stuart "Stu" Spaulding Jr (8.8. 1914 USA to 28.9.1961 Germany).
Son of a long-established Boston industrialist family. (His father William Stuart Sr. and his uncle John T. Stuart were great art collectors, especially French Impressionists and Japanese Ukyo-e [woodblock prints], who bequeathed their impressive collections to the Boston Fine Arts Museum). Stuart Jr. studied at Harvard and after his father's death (1937) led the life of an athlete and rich heir. Married in 1942 to Angèle Maggi (1924-2005), heiress to the Italian-Swiss industrial dynasty (Maggie seasonings and soups). The couple enjoyed a jet-set lifestyle with alternating residences in the U.S. (Hamptons) and Europe (Gstaad) and horse studs in the U.S. and Germany. After Stuart Jr's untimely death, Angèle Stuart remained in Europe and devoted herself to her stud farm in Germany, passing away in 2005. The portrait was auctioned by Sothebys Amsterdam from her estate in 2005.
The portrait of Stuart Spaulding Junior in the Adams original version is a successful "casual" portrait of a member of the American jeunesse dorée. The portrayed person's informal posture and youth are aptly captured. Unfortunately, the portrait was cropped at a later time (see color insert) and has thus lost much of its original charm. (Lack of space is unlikely to have been the reason for this distortion, a fate suffered by several extreme large-format paintings of Adams). In the same year, 1930, Adams also painted a portrait of Stuart Spaulding Jr.'s sister (Alice) and in 1931 one of his mother (Katrina) (see cross-references).
Exhibited
Literature
Anon, Reminiscences of John Quincy Adams, The Stage 349, 1933, pp. 1-9. fig. Stuart Spaulding on p.8.
Sothebys Amsterdam, 2005, Maggie-Spaulding An American-European Collection. press release.
Provenance
Sitter.
His widow.
2005 auction Sothebys Amsterdam.
Unknown private collection.