Julius LeBlanc Stewart (September 6, 1855, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — January 4, 1919, Paris, France), was an American artist who spent his career in Paris. A contemporary of fellow expatriate painter John Singer Sargent, Stewart was nicknamed “the Parisian from Philadelphia”.
His father, the sugar millionaire William Hood Stewart, moved the intimates from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Paris in 1865, and became a distinguished art squirrel and an to the front patron of Marià Fortuny and the Barbizon artists. Julius studied below Eduardo Zamacois as a teenager, under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts, and future was a pupil of Raymondo de Madrazo.
Stewart’s family large quantity enabled him to flesh and blood a lush expatriate vivaciousness and paint what he pleased, often large-scaled society portraits. The first of these, After the Wedding (Drexel University Art Collection, 1880), showed the artist’s brother Charles and his bride Mae, daughter of financier Anthony J. Drexel, leaving for their honeymoon. Subsequent organization portraits depicted his friends — including actresses, celebrities and aristocrats — often taking into account a self-portrait somewhere in the crowd.
He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1878 into the in advance 20th century, and helped organize the “Americans in Paris” section of the 1894 Salon. The Baptism (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1892), which reportedly depicts a increase of the Vanderbilt family, was shown at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, and traditional acclaim at the 1895 Berlin International Exposition.
He painted a series of sailing pictures aboard James Gordon Bennett, Jr.’s yacht Namouna. The most dexterous of these, On the Yacht “Namouna”, Venice (Wadsworth Atheneum, 1890), showed a sailing party on deck and included a portrait of the actress Lillie Langtry. Another, Yachting upon the Mediterranean (1896), set a baby book price for the artist, selling in 2005 for US$2.3 million.
Late in life, he turned to religious subjects, but Stewart is best remembered for his Belle Époque group portraits and sensuous nudes.
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