Provenance
The sitter, William Grant [d. 1821], Congalton, Scotland, and Cheltenham, England; his son, William Grant [d. 1827], Congalton, Scotland, and London; his daughter, Elizabeth Grant [Mrs. Charles Pelham-Clinton, d. 1899];[1] her son, Charles Stapleton Pelham-Clinton [1857-1911], Moor Park, Stroud, Gloucestershire;[2] his widow, Elizabeth Pelham-Clinton [d. 1946], London and Holmes Green, Buckinghamshire; her niece and adopted daughter, Georgiana Elizabeth May Pelham-Clinton [Mrs. John Stuart Bordewich, b. 1913] London; sold 1950 to the NGA.
[1] The wills of William Grant and his son (Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh) do not mention the portrait. _Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, Privy Council and Order of Precedence_, 101st ed., London, 1956: 1611, lists Mrs. Pelham-Clinton, the first owner of record, as her father's only surviving child at the time of her marriage in 1848. Her husband was the second son of Henry Pelham-Clinton, 4th Duke of Newcastle.
[2] According to a file note by William P. Campbell (NGA curatorial file), a label from the 1878 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts is attached to the stretcher and documents this owner and address; see Burke 1956, 1611, for the dates of this and later owners.
Accession Number
1950.18.1
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 245.5 x 147.4 cm (96 5/8 x 58 1/16 in.) | framed: 274.3 x 177.2 x 9.5 cm (108 x 69 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Tags
Painting Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Oil Painting Canvas American
Background & Context
Background Story
The Skater (Portrait of William Grant) (1782) is one of Stuart's most celebrated and innovative portraits, depicting its subject in the act of skating—a compositional choice that was radically unconventional for formal portraiture in the 1780s. The painting shows Grant gliding across ice with the effortless grace of an accomplished skater, his body angled in a dynamic pose that shatters portraiture's conventions of static dignity. Stuart painted this portrait during his London period (1777-1793), when he was studying with Benjamin West and absorbing the conventions and innovations of British portraiture. The subject of a man skating was influenced by Gilbert Stuart's observation of skaters on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, and by the current European convention of action portraiture. The painting's success was immediate: exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782, it established Stuart's reputation as a portraitist of unusual inventiveness. The dynamic composition—Grant's body creating a powerful diagonal, his skating leg extended, his coat billowing behind—creates a visual energy that conventional seated or standing portraits lacked. The painting demonstrated that portraiture could convey character through action rather than merely through facial expression and costume, a principle that would influence the development of American portraiture when Stuart returned to the United States.
Cultural Impact
The Skater influenced action portraiture in both British and American painting, demonstrating that formal representation and physical movement were compatible. The painting influenced later American portraitists who similarly sought to depict their sitters in characteristic activities rather than static poses. The painting also influenced how skating was represented in art—establishing an image of the graceful skater that persisted through 19th-century painting to contemporary figure skating imagery.
Why It Matters
This painting matters because it demonstrates how a single work can transform a genre. Portraiture before The Skater was predominantly static; portraiture after The Skater had to justify its stasis against the possibility of action. The painting's influence on the fundamental convention of its genre—how to depict a person—makes it one of the most consequential portraits in Western art, revealing how convention can be both a foundation and a constraint.
