Dartmouth has long collected portraits of Dartmouth associates. As early as 1793, the College commissioned Dartmouth graduate and self-taught artist Joseph Steward, Class of 1780, to paint full-length portraits of the College's founder, Eleazar Wheelock, and early trustee John Phillips. Several decades later, alumnus George Shattuck commissioned Francis Alexander, Chester Harding, and Thomas Sully to depict the four attorneys who helped to defend Dartmouth's original charter in the famous Dartmouth College Case, decided in the College's favor by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1819. The most famous and influential of these was Daniel Webster, Dartmouth Class of 1801, who has been honored by many portraits in the collection, including one by Gilbert Stuart. Other, non-Dartmouth portraits in the collection include examples by Samuel F. S. B. Morse, G. P. A. Healy, James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Irving Wiles, John Sloan, and Paul Sample.
