Julius Leblanc Stewart Biography | Oil Paintings.

Julius LeBlanc Stewart came from a wealthy family, his father, the sugar tycoon William Hood Stewart, a distinguished art collector and an early patron of Maria Fortuny and the Barbizon artists, moved the family from Philadelphia to Paris in 1865, when Julius was ten years old. Julius LeBlanc Stewart studied under Eduardo Zamacois as a teenager, also under Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts, and later was a pupil of Raymondo de Madrazo.

Julius LeBlanc Stewart's family riches allowed him to carry on with a lavish lifestyle and paint whatever pleased him, often large-scale group portraits, depicted his companions, including Paris high society of actresses, celebrities, and aristocrats. He often put himself in the group painting, somewhere in the crowd. The first of these, After the Wedding, painted in 1877 when he was twenty-two years old, features members of financier Anthony J. Drexel's family at a wedding between his daughter Mae and the artist's brother Charles. Another painting the following year, The Mountebank, was recently auctioned in 2015 for US$1.33 million.

Julius LeBlanc Stewart regularly exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1878 until 1910 and helped organize the "Americans in Paris" section of the 1894 Salon. He painted a progression of sailing pictures aboard James Gordon Bennett, Jr.'s large yacht Namouna. The most refined of these, On the Yacht Namouna, Venice, features a party on the deck including the actress Lillie Langtry. Another oil painting, Yachting in the Mediterranean, set a record price for one of his paintings, selling at a 2005 auction for US$2.3 million.

Late in life, he turned to religious subjects, but Julius LeBlanc Stewart is best remembered for his Belle Époque society portraits and sensuous nudes. Julius LeBlanc Stewart nicknamed "the Parisian from Philadelphia", and a contemporary of fellow American expatriate painter John Singer Sargent spent his whole life in Paris.

Art Movement: Academic Art.
Artists Influencing Julius LeBlanc Stewart: Eduardo Zamacois, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Raymondo de Madrazo.
He Traveled To France, Germany.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.