In middle age he was slight of figure, his height about five feet ten inches, his form compact and of nervous vigor.

His complexion was Italian;[28] his expression keen; his nose long, prominent; his mouth small, fine cut, and mobile; his eyes hazel, and penetrative; his skull a model for the sculptor.

Thus he appears in the portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart about the time that he took charge of the Treasury Department; he was then about forty years of age.

In the fine portrait by William H.Powell, taken from life in 1843, and preserved in the gallery of the New York Historical Society, these characteristics appear in stronger outline.

Monsieur de Bacourt,[29] the literary executor of Talleyrand, who was the French Ambassador to the United States in 1840, paid a visit to Mr.Gallatin in that year, and describes him as a "beau vieillard de quatre-vingt ans," who has fully preserved his faculties.