Baron FitzGibbon

A full-length figure stands beneath heavy drapery, surrounded by the objects of high office. The white wig, black robe and gold decoration make John FitzGibbon’s position visible before the viewer studies his face. Gilbert Stuart painted this imposing likeness in Dublin in 1789, when FitzGibbon became Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, it demonstrates the painter’s ability to work within the elaborate conventions of ceremonial portraiture. ^{[1] [2]}

The painting rewards attention to its separate materials and accessories. A crownlike object on the table belongs to a mace; an embroidered bag at the foot of the table is a ceremonial purse. Together with the costume, these objects present authority through things that could be carried, worn or displayed. The individual portrait and the portrait of an office operate at the same time.

A full-length portrait of office

Stuart gives FitzGibbon a commanding scale. His figure extends from the large wig to the buckled shoes, with the long robe reaching the floor. One hand rests at his hip; the other holds a folded paper. The pose is controlled and comparatively still, allowing the costume and the surrounding objects to supply much of the painting’s visual activity.

The appointment to the Lord Chancellorship provides the immediate context. FitzGibbon’s responsibilities included high judicial authority, a role in the House of Lords and keeping the Great Seal. The portrait belongs to the year of his elevation, although the idea that it specifically celebrated that event is a plausible interpretation of the commission rather than a surviving account of an unveiling ceremony. ^[2]

The scale also places Stuart’s subject within a recognized language of rank. Full-length portraits permitted a sitter to occupy a space large enough for dress, gestures, furniture and architecture to work together. Here, the width of the gown and the weight of the drapery enlarge the figure’s presence. The face remains relatively small within a larger arrangement devoted to status.

This helps explain why the painting feels different from a compact likeness centered on conversation or domestic activity. FitzGibbon is presented through the visible apparatus of office. That apparatus can be examined without assuming that it supplies a complete or impartial account of the person who possessed the authority.

FitzGibbon and Stuart in Dublin

Stuart arrived in Dublin in 1787 after establishing himself in London. Joshua Reynolds had encouraged the Irish opportunity, but the death of the Duke of Rutland, a prospective patron, changed its immediate circumstances. Stuart nevertheless found a substantial market among the Anglo-Irish governing elite and others able to commission ambitious portraits. His Dublin years became an important phase of his career. ^[13]

FitzGibbon belonged to that governing world. A lawyer and politician before his appointment as Lord Chancellor, he was a firm supporter of British authority in Ireland and later helped promote parliamentary union. Those political commitments give necessary context to the portrait’s regalia. The image was made in 1789, before the union legislation of 1800, and should not be read as a painting commissioned to commemorate that later outcome. ^[14]

His Dublin household also mattered to the culture of the commission. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage identifies No. 6 Ely Place as his house, a townhouse built in 1771 and subsequently altered for later use. Barratt’s catalogue account places his entertaining and collecting at Ely Place. These details connect the portrait with a patron’s cultivated domestic surroundings without identifying its painted column or curtain as a literal view inside that building. ^[15]

Stuart’s biography follows the personal and financial difficulties that accompanied his success in Ireland. The portrait itself demonstrates that his practice there included wealthy, demanding clients and conspicuous displays of office. It was a working environment with its own relationships and expectations, rather than a pause between London and the later American presidential portraits.

Robe, wig and the presentation of rank

The gown creates a broad dark shape around the figure, but gold decoration prevents it from becoming a plain silhouette. Repeated motifs extend down the outer edges and spread across the shoulders. Their small variations produce a sense of rich, worked material. The face and hands emerge from a costume whose decoration can draw the eye over almost the entire height of the canvas.

Barratt identifies the figured black silk, bullion lace and toggles as part of an elaborate official garment. Underneath it, FitzGibbon wears a black satin suit and formal shoes. These are material and social distinctions: the portrait records several kinds of expensive fabric and decoration rather than one generalized black robe with bright highlights. ^[16]

The full-bottom wig supplies a contrasting mass around the face. Its pale sides descend well below the chin, emphasizing the separation between the head and the dark costume. The catalogue relates this formal wig to the elevated offices of Lord Chancellor and Speaker in the Irish parliamentary setting. Its appearance therefore carries a specific association with rank. ^[16]

Stuart’s later portrait of John Jay offers a useful distinction. Jay wears robes associated with his honorary degree from Harvard, while FitzGibbon’s ensemble belongs to the ceremonial apparatus of his office. Both paintings use dress to give a public figure authority, but the garments refer to different institutions and honours. Their meanings depend on the particular costume and sitter. ^[17]

Looking across these surfaces reveals the painting’s different degrees of attention. Small curls and patterned trim are more tightly described than much of the surrounding drapery. The body is enclosed within a conspicuous costume, yet the accessories remain distinguishable from one another. Stuart makes luxury legible through differences in texture, shape and handling, not simply through the quantity of gold-coloured paint.

Mace and embroidered ceremonial purse

The gold object resting on the table is especially easy to misread. Its open, crownlike form is the upper part of a ceremonial mace, not a separate crown set out for FitzGibbon to wear. The mace was carried before the chancellor in formal procession. It makes institutional power present in the portrait even though the official is shown standing at ease. ^[18]

Below it, the large square purse leans against the table near his foot. Its embroidered royal arms and decorative fittings stand out against red fabric. The museum identifies its satin and velvet materials and explains its connection with official speeches. The bag’s visual prominence gives a ceremonial object an unusually substantial role in the composition. ^[18]

The carrier should also be distinguished from the sitter. Barratt’s discussion identifies the office of purse bearer and explains that the bag would be worn by that attendant in procession. Its presence beside FitzGibbon does not mean he personally wore it like an apron. The portrait brings together things associated with the chancellorship that had different users and functions. ^[18]

Stuart devotes considerable pictorial energy to this low-placed object. Bright, small passages describe ornament, while the surrounding red cloth falls in broader folds. Following that contrast brings attention from the mace to the purse and back towards the robe. The accessories form a second route through the painting, complementing the long vertical figure.

The figure against architecture and drapery

The background gives the standing figure a setting larger than an ordinary room. A substantial column rises behind him, while red drapery extends across the top and down one side. At the left, a cloudy sky opens the composition. The arrangement establishes an architectural stage without requiring every part to belong to one identifiable interior.

Barratt connects this format with the grand tradition of full-length portraiture, particularly Van Dyck, Reynolds and royal images by Benjamin West. A portrait of the Duke of Rutland by Reynolds, known to FitzGibbon through a commissioned replica, provided a relevant model of scale and splendour. These comparisons explain a visual language available to patron and painter; they do not establish that every detail was copied from one source. ^[19]

The figure’s stillness becomes more striking within that active surround. Drapery curves and folds overhead, clouds shift in tone, and the robe’s gold pattern repeats down to the floor. FitzGibbon’s measured pose holds these elements together. His head turns away from a direct encounter with the viewer, while the folded paper gives the lowered hand a quiet occupation.

The face consequently operates within a deliberately unequal distribution of emphasis. The setting and costume advertise the scope of the office, while the likeness identifies its holder. Reading the painting through those relationships is more useful than treating the expression alone as a key to all of FitzGibbon’s political actions or private character.

Material, surface and the possible tablecloth support

The painting’s support introduces a different kind of material history. Cleveland identifies a large piece of textured linen and suggests that it was probably a tablecloth. The possibility is intriguing because it places a potentially domestic textile beneath a picture of elaborate public ceremony. The museum’s qualification remains essential: the object has not been established as a tablecloth beyond doubt. ^[3]

That suggestion does not explain why Stuart selected it. The support alone cannot prove a sudden shortage of canvas, a specific financial crisis or an improvised sitting. Those would require further evidence. What can be discussed is the relationship between a textured fabric support and the painted illusion of other fabrics, metalwork and flesh placed upon it.

Barratt also notes differences in execution across the image, contrasting the facility of passages such as the purse with the tighter handling of the wig and face. These differences have prompted suggestions that an assistant contributed or that Stuart adjusted his manner to the expectations of Irish patrons. They remain proposals about how to interpret the surface, rather than an identification of a second painter. ^[20]

The visible range deserves attention even without resolving that question. The purse invites close study of bright ornament; the long costume depends on repeated patterns; the broader background supports the figure at a distance. The painting asks different parts of its surface to perform different tasks. A single description such as “loosely painted” or “tightly finished” would conceal that variety.

The mezzotint and a patron’s response

FitzGibbon’s image circulated beyond oil painting. Charles Howard Hodges produced a mezzotint after Stuart in 1790. The Fitzwilliam Museum’s impression, Iohn Lord Fitzgibbon , records Hodges as printmaker, Stuart as the painter of the source image and George Cowen as publisher. It is a separate object in a different medium, with its own date and history. ^[21]

Mezzotint builds an image through dark and light values on a prepared metal plate. It could translate the broad tonal effects of portrait painting for a wider audience, while changing the experience of colour and surface. The print’s relationship to Stuart’s composition is therefore an act of interpretation and reproduction, as well as a means of circulation.

The sitter was dissatisfied with Hodges’s result. Barratt cites a 1799 letter in which FitzGibbon called the print “a vile bad one” while seeking a new mezzotint after a portrait by John Hoppner. That criticism concerns the reproduction. It does not establish that he disliked Stuart’s oil painting, and should not be expanded into a rejected commission without further evidence. ^[22]

The distinction is particularly useful because other versions of the painted image have been recorded. Barratt’s notes describe several related oils whose attribution to Stuart was not secure. A smaller repetition, a print after a composition and the large Cleveland canvas may share recognizable features while preserving different relationships to the artist. Their similarity should prompt comparison, rather than an automatic claim of autograph authorship or exact dependence. ^[23]

British patronage within an American painter’s career

Stuart’s Irish patrons encountered a painter whose reputation had developed in London. Barratt records a Dublin newspaper describing him as English, despite his Rhode Island birth. That description reveals how his route into the city and command of fashionable portraiture shaped local expectations. His American identity and his work within British and Irish patronage belonged to one transatlantic career. ^[13]

The later Lansdowne portrait of George Washington offers a revealing comparison. It also places a standing public figure among architecture, drapery, furniture and carefully chosen objects. The ceremonial language is shared, but the costume and gestures make different claims. FitzGibbon’s official gown and full wig contrast with Washington’s civilian dress and extended arm. The comparison shows Stuart adapting a large portrait format to distinct political identities, without proving a direct line of copying between the two pictures. ^[12]

The Cleveland painting’s subsequent history extends beyond its original patronage. The museum traces it through FitzGibbon’s family, later ownership associated with Bedgebury and the 1919 sale through which it passed to Knoedler and then Cleveland. The acquisition is credited to the General Income Fund. Qualifications in the early family succession should remain part of that history. ^[24]

The portrait now permits several kinds of looking at once. It is a likeness of a particular politician, a record of ceremonial objects, a demonstration of painted materials and an example of how authority could be staged. Its extraordinary costume and accessories are central to that achievement. Following them carefully gives the viewer a more precise understanding of what Stuart was asked to make visible.