Like a decadent lady cake crafted by the finest chef a Gilded Age heiress could hire, the artwork of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artist Julius LeBlanc Stewart (1855–1919) exudes a rich taste. In his best-known painting, The Hunt Ball (1885), the painter captures the spirit of an elite turn-of-the-century gathering, with women in bustled dresses dancing the cotillion hand-in-hand with suited men. Celebrity cameos are painted throughout the joyous scene, including one of the famous Gilded Age actress Lillie Langtry.
Like a decadent lady cake crafted by the finest chef a Gilded Age heiress could hire, the artwork of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century artist Julius LeBlanc Stewart (1855–1919) exudes a rich taste. In his best-known painting, The Hunt Ball (1885), the painter captures the spirit of an elite turn-of-the-century gathering, with women in bustled dresses dancing the cotillion hand-in-hand with suited men. Celebrity cameos are painted throughout the joyous scene, including one of the famous Gilded Age actress Lillie Langtry.
“Stewart was a product of this era, and the values of conspicuous consumption and the pursuit of leisure that defined the Gilded Age became intrinsic to his artistic narrative,” writes Campbell A. Mobley in the recently released book of essays The Sweet Life: Julius Leblanc Stewart and Painting the Belle Époque (Giles, $49.95), edited by James W. Tottis, vice-president of museum affairs at Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee. “In examining Stewart’s works from this perspective,” Mobley continues, “one gains insight into the broader societal shifts occurring in the Belle Époque or the Gilded Age.” Stewart was born into the Philadelphia upper crust, and the book’s title makes oblique reference to the source of his family’s wealth: sugarcane grown by enslaved laborers at the La Carolina plantation in Cienfuegos, Cuba. When he was ten years old the family relocated to Paris, where Stewart would reside for the rest of his life. His father became a well-known collector of contemporary Spanish art, such as the work of Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala and Raimundo de Madrazo, who would become young Stewart’s tutors. The burgeoning painter received his formal arts education at the École des Beaux-Arts under the tutelage of Jean-Léon Gérôme. Well-positioned and with talent to boot, Stewart shortly embarked on a career that garnered an international set of wealthy patrons and was marked by frequent exhibitions at prestigious institutions both in France and stateside, which would last until his death at the age of sixty-three.
Since Stewart left no diaries or other writings, The Sweet Life text relies on contemporary writers’ artistic and historical analyses, alongside examples of his artwork, personal photographs, and other ephemera to paint a picture of the painter’s life. Readers will discover the stories behind Stewart’s paintings, including his inspirations and frustrations. In an enjoyable essay by William DeGregorio, the fashion curator and historian describes the artist’s eye for niceties of dress. “From early in his career, Julius Leblanc Stewart earned a reputation for depicting fashion both accurately and seductively,” Tottis writes. “For his canvases full of meticulously rendered silks, bows, ribbons, and laces, he garnered both praise and derision, exemplifying the era’s fraught understanding of fashion’s role in contemporary art.”
Readers are also guided through conversations on identity. An essay by Valerie Ann Leeds explores Stewart’s status as an American artist who embraced the French way of life, both in his art and socially. In separate chapters, Vincent DiGirolamo and Jacqueline Francis touch on Stewart’s relationship to Black people. DiGirolamo’s is some of the first scholarship to discuss the Stewart family’s slave-holding history, and the human cost that supported their privileged lives. Francis focuses on Stewart’s inclusion of people of color in his work, such as in his 1880 painting After the Wedding, which includes a Black woman in a crowd of attendees at a wealthy wedding. Stewart led a sweet life of fabulous parties, exciting travels, and painting success. But like many who lived such charmed lives during the Gilded Age, it was often at the expense of others.
