The Shadow of a Legacy In a Boston studio during the early 19th century, a young girl watches the light shift across a canvas. She is not permitted to hold the brush or receive formal instruction. Instead, Jane Stuart spends her childhood grinding pigments and filling in the backgrounds of her father's large-scale works. Her father, Gilbert Stuart, believes that true talent requires no formal training, a philosophy that leaves Jane to learn the nuances of light and form through observation and the quiet labor of an assistant. She absorbs the mechanics of portraiture by watching him work, abso…