John Adams

Gilbert Stuart

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the waist up, a pale-skinned, clean-shaven man sits looking at us in front of a peanut-brown background in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our left, but he turns his head to look at us with blue eyes under dark, arched brows. He has a bumped nose, fleshy, flushed cheeks, loose jowls, and a round chin. He has bags under his eyes, crow’s feet, and his thin pink lips are parted. Gray hair curls like bushes to each side of his balding head, which is white across the top of his pate and down the long, bushy sideburns. He wears a high-collared white shirt with a ruffle at the throat under a similarly high-collared black coat. His left elbow, to our right and closer to us, rests on the arm of a wooden armchair. That hand rests in a loose fist in front of the man’s waist, and the cuff is lined with white lace.