John Bill Ricketts

Biography

Ricketts began his theatrical career with Hughes Royal Circus in London in the 1780s, and came over from Britain in 1792 to establish his first circus in Philadelphia. He built a circus building in Philadelphia in the fall of 1792 in which he conducted a riding school. After training a group of Pennsylvania horses, on April 3, 1793, he gave America's first complete circus performance, which began a series of exhibitions two and three times a week. George Washington appears to have gone to at least one of his performances. In December 1799 his circus building burned down. Ricketts apparently went to Martinique where he sold his livestock at a profit and was returning to England when his ship sank.

Gilbert Stuart portrait

Ricketts is identified as the subject of an unfinished portrait of ca. 1795–99 by Gilbert Stuart. The painting's current provenance includes the sitter's brother, Francis Ricketts; it was later owned by Peter Grain and George Washington Riggs. In 1879, George C. Mason published The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart, in which he described the painting as "an unfinished picture, which, there is strong reason for believing, was painted by Stuart" and identified the subject as Breschard, the Circus Rider. It was under this title that the painting was displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1880. In 1942 the painting entered the collection of the National Gallery of Art, which changed the identification to "John Bill Ricketts" by 1947.