Arthur Stewart

This article is about the portraitist Arthur Stewart, for the Tennessee Senator, see Tom Stewart.

Arthur Stewart (1921 - 2001) was an internationally-known portrait painter, with panels hanging at Milan's La Scala opera house, the Pentagon in Washington D. C., and in the personal collection of Queen Elizabeth II. He established his studio at Glocca Morra Farm in Cahaba Heights in the late 1950s and was inducted into the Portrait Painters' Hall of Fame in 1985.

Stewart was born in Marion. He started painting as a six-year-old and, but the time he was 23 he had his own show at the Art Institute of Chicago. He served as a painter for the ordnance department in the Army during World War II. He spent the next few years travelling, spending time in Europe, Mexico and San Francisco, before moving to Birmingham in 1952 and immediately entered into a rivalry with portraitist Arthur Weeks. He was well known in social circles and, after a few years, he bought property in the "wilderness" of Cahaba Heights, which he named "Glocca Morra" after a song in the musical Finian's Rainbow. He built a new studio cottage and completed thousands of commissions, as well as his own landscapes, studies and sketches over the next few decades. He continued to travel and work up and down the East Coast and in Europe throughout his active life.

Stewart's health began to fail in the 1990s and he was cared for by his sister, Hannah Stewart, who gradually isolated him from his circle of friends. He still worked up until his last days. After he died she sold the deteriorating property, including hundreds of paintings and sketches, to Uncut Flowers owners Gann and Michael Dyer.

References

• Jordan, Phillip (July 13, 2006) "Rediscovering Arthur Stewart." Birmingham Weekly.

External links

• Arthur Stewart gallery of paintings at Glocca Morra.