John Bill Ricketts

John Bill Ricketts looks out from a carefully painted head surrounded by an unfinished composition. His white neckcloth is bright against the dark paint behind his hair, while much of the canvas remains pale and open. A horse’s head appears in brown outlines beside him; another emerges from the darker area around his own head. Gilbert Stuart gives the circus proprietor a composed presence within a picture whose unresolved passages are unusually revealing. ^[1]

The National Gallery of Art dates the portrait to 1795–99. It belongs to Stuart’s Philadelphia years, when Ricketts’s equestrian performances attracted audiences that included George Washington. The painting connects the public world of entertainment with the private work of a portrait studio. ^[2]

A performer portrayed as a gentleman

The face is the most fully developed part of the work. Stuart models the forehead, nose and cheeks with warm colour, setting the eyes beneath dark brows. Grey curls form a substantial shape around the head, while the white neckcloth rises towards the jaw. The mouth is closed and the gaze steady. No riding trick or theatrical action interrupts the likeness. ^[10]

This appearance gives Ricketts the dignity familiar from Stuart’s portraits of other Philadelphia sitters. The concentration on the head allows a performer to be encountered as an individual, rather than simply recognised through an act. His occupation enters through the horse beside him, while the face remains the picture’s centre of attention.

That balance is particularly effective in an unfinished painting. The brown horse outlines are visible enough to establish the equestrian connection, but they do not compete with a fully painted animal. The broad surrounding field gives the developed head a striking isolation. The viewer can move between the convincing likeness and the much looser marks that propose a larger composition.

The result also invites comparison with The Skater , where Stuart makes movement essential to the sitter’s presentation. Ricketts was professionally associated with physical skill, yet here he is still. The contrast shows that an occupation or accomplishment did not prescribe a single kind of portrait. An active public reputation could accompany a quiet, attentive likeness.

Circus networks and Philadelphia

Ricketts arrived in Philadelphia from Britain in 1792. He first offered riding instruction and then, in April 1793, public equestrian performances. Tightrope walking and clowning expanded the programme. His enterprise occupies an early place in the history of the American circus, combining skilled horsemanship with other forms of entertainment. ^[14]

Accounts brought together by Miles describe acts in which Ricketts juggled oranges while standing in the saddle or carried another rider balanced above him. Such performances depended on a trained horse as well as the rider’s control. They give a concrete meaning to the equestrian identity that Stuart suggests through the outlined animal and gently placed hand. ^[15]

The business soon extended beyond one location. Ricketts travelled with his company and returned to Philadelphia, where he built a new amphitheatre in 1795 at Sixth and Chestnut Streets. Ellen G. Miles describes a round wooden building with a conical roof, seating for several hundred people and a chandelier for evening performances. It was a substantial urban venue, rather than a modern touring tent. ^[14]

Washington attended performances, and Ricketts’s amphitheatre hosted a celebration of the president’s birthday in February 1797. Miles also records Ricketts’s purchase of Washington’s white horse Jack. These connections place the circus within the capital’s social life and the public interest in the president’s horsemanship. They do not establish that Jack is the animal Stuart intended to paint beside Ricketts. ^[16]

A surviving playbill for Albany on 4 August 1797 offers a different view of the enterprise. Two illustrations show balancing and equestrian feats, while prominent headings advertise riding exercises, a broad-sword performance and a Flying Mercury act. The named horse Cornplanter appears in the bill. Such advertising presented the performer through spectacle and promised action, in contrast with the portrait’s composed face. ^[17]

The circus also intersected with the Sully family’s theatrical work. Stuart’s 2004 catalogue identifies both Matthew Sully senior, Thomas’s father, and Matthew junior among the performers. Those family connections help explain how the world of equestrian entertainment could lead towards the study of portrait painting, without making every Sully or every Ricketts the same person. ^[14]

Two horse heads beside Ricketts

The horse at the viewer’s left is indicated with long brown strokes. Its ears, forehead and descending muzzle form a vertical shape beside Ricketts’s face. A roughly sketched hand rests near the muzzle, connecting the person and animal. Stuart establishes their relationship before filling in the clothing, body or wider setting. ^[15]

Miles suggests that this horse may be Cornplanter, one of Ricketts’s celebrated performing animals. The 1797 playbill supports the horse’s importance to the circus, but it cannot prove the identity of the animal in the painting. The name belongs to a plausible interpretation, rather than a label that can be read from the canvas. ^[15]

A second head occupies the darker paint around the sitter’s hair. An ear and other equine features interrupt what initially looks like a simple background shape. Miles explains that Stuart first used this dark area to help model the face by contrast. He then added horse features to it, perhaps playfully. The second animal is therefore formed within the working background, rather than established as a fully developed companion figure. ^[18]

The two heads have different pictorial roles. One belongs to the intended arrangement of rider, horse and hand; the other alters the dark surround already serving the human likeness. Their coexistence makes the unfinished painting unusually informative. Marks that a completed background might have covered remain available for inspection.

The possibility of a joke should remain separate from stories about the portrait’s abandonment. The 2004 catalogue repeats a later account in which Stuart became angry at delays and refused to continue. That recollection is not a secure record of the sequence of marks on the canvas. The visible horse features show what was painted; they do not by themselves establish the painter’s temper or his reason for stopping. ^[19]

What unfinished paint allows us to see

Much of the pale field is exposed ground , the preparatory coating on the fabric. The National Gallery’s technical account describes a twill-weave support and a ground probably once white, now appearing beige. It reports fluid paint applied directly without an underdrawing. The unfinished areas expose this foundation alongside passages carried much further. ^[20]

The face contains gradual shifts between light, warm colour and shadow. Beside it, the horse is described through a small number of decisive strokes. Around the hair, a broader brown mass supplies contrast. These different kinds of mark belong to a single developing image, allowing the viewer to compare the description of a form with the earlier act of placing it.

The dark surround is especially useful for understanding that process. A face cannot be judged entirely apart from the tones next to it. By supplying a darker area early, Stuart could assess the lights and shadows of the head before completing the whole background. Miles compares this arrangement with the unfinished Athenaeum portraits . ^[18]

The picture consequently offers more than a contrast between finished and empty areas. It shows how an artist could concentrate effort on the likeness while leaving other decisions provisional. The prepared field, outlined horse, white neckcloth and developed face reveal distinct stages of attention. They do not provide a complete timetable or explain every change Stuart intended.

Later students valued this visibility. Henry T. Tuckerman described such works as “unfinished heads much prized by art-students”, in a passage cited by Miles. Their incompleteness could make them useful examples of a painter’s method. The Ricketts portrait’s later importance as something to study grew from qualities different from those expected of a fully finished commission. ^[21]

Thomas Sully and the portrait’s afterlife

Ricketts’s Philadelphia amphitheatre burned in December 1799. He eventually left the United States with his company for the West Indies, and was later lost at sea while attempting to return to England. The unfinished portrait remained behind and belonged to his brother Francis, himself a circus performer. The subsequent history of the painting therefore continued beyond the sitter’s own enterprise. ^[22]

Thomas Sully recorded two portraits of a Mr. Ricketts in 1807. The first, a small picture begun in May, was explicitly described as copied from a painting. The second, begun in November, was a larger bust portrait. Both are now unlocated. Miles suggests that the first may have copied Stuart’s canvas and that the second could have represented Francis. These possibilities should not be collapsed into two certain copies of John Bill. ^[23]

The recorded sizes also differed. The May picture measured twelve by ten inches, while the November bust portrait measured twenty-four by twenty inches. Even if both were eventually identified as John Bill, those formats would need to be distinguished. The register’s measurements and copying note describe particular works; they do not establish an identical pair of replicas. ^[23]

Sully also visited Stuart in Boston in 1807, watching him work and receiving criticism of a portrait. The Metropolitan Museum’s account of Sully describes that encounter as part of his development. It establishes direct contact with Stuart without proving a long formal apprenticeship or that the Ricketts painting itself was present during the visit. ^[24]

Together, the possible copy and the documented studio contact show different ways in which a younger painter could learn. An existing picture offered something to examine and reproduce; a visit allowed observation and discussion. The unfinished Ricketts canvas was especially suited to later study because it left parts of Stuart’s working procedure exposed.

Later marks and the object’s history

The pencil inscriptions in the lower corners were added after the portrait was painted. They attempt to identify the sitter and associate him with Stuart, but they are not the painter’s autograph. The National Gallery’s technical notes report inscription material lodged in cracks in the paint, evidence that the writing belongs to a later stage of the object’s history. ^[20]

Those additions did not prevent uncertainty about the sitter. The picture appeared in older publications under names including Breschard and Rechart or Rickart. Miles discusses the later research that established the Ricketts identification. The changing names are a reminder that an inscription, a catalogue title and a securely identified sitter are not always equivalent forms of evidence. ^[25]

The Gallery’s provenance traces the painting from Francis Ricketts to an auction purchase by the painter Peter Grain around 1853. Through a Washington dealer named Barlow, it reached George W. Riggs before 1867. It descended through the Riggs family and Mary F. McMullan before Pauline Riggs Noyes acquired it. Her 1942 gift brought it into the National Gallery, with a credit commemorating Elisha Riggs. ^[1]

These successive owners preserved a canvas that never acquired the fully painted body and setting anticipated by its initial outlines. Its value now includes that incomplete state. The face remains an effective likeness, while the horse sketches, prepared field and later writing allow distinct moments in the picture’s history to remain visible.

Within American portraiture , Ricketts offers a particularly clear example of how an unfinished work can acquire a second life. A commission associated with an equestrian entrepreneur became an object of interest to painters, collectors and historians. Its open passages continue to encourage close looking, provided visible paint, later annotations and retrospective stories are kept in their proper relationship.