Jane Stuart was born in 1812 in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of renowned painter Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828). After her father"s death in 1828, she opened a studio in Boston and started selling paintings, especially replicas of her father"s portrait of President George Washington (1732–1799).
In 1834, she painted Scene from a Novel or a Subject from Literature, now owned by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her painting A Portrait of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry belonged to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island until it was sold by Christie"s in 1999. From 1827 to 1870, her work was often exhibited at the Boston Athenæum as well as at the National Academy Museum and School in New York City.
In the 1850s, her studio burned and she moved to her family home in Newport, Rhode Island.
By 1886, she moved to 86 Mill Street in Newport. During that time, she continued to paint and occasionally wrote for Scribner"s Monthly.
Though she was financially strapped, she kept up appearances during the Gilded Age by selling her father"s paintings or her reproductions of them. Death
She died in 1888.
