Trumbull, John
Trumbull, John
TRUMBULL, JOHN. (1756–1843). "The painter of the Revolution." Connecticut. The youngest of six children of Governor Jonathan Trumbull, John was a sickly child who had severe convulsions caused by overlapping bones of the skull. This defect healed in his third year, but he severely injured his left eye about a year later. Interested in drawing early in life, he was prevented by his father from studying under John Singleton Copley in Boston. He was sent instead to Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1773. He started teaching school in Lebanon, and continued to teach himself art. When the war began John was appointed adjutant to General Joseph Spencer, and on 27 July 1775 became an aide to General George Washington, who had seen some of Trumbull's drawings of enemy positions and thought he could put his talents to military use. Trumbull did not feel at ease in this post, however, and he accepted a commission as brigade major on 15 August 1775. He took part in the action on Dorchester Heights, went with the army to New York City, and on 28 June 1776 became deputy adjutant general to Horatio Gates, with the rank of colonel. He resigned on 19 April 1777 and spent time in Boston studying art before volunteering as an aide to John Sullivan for the actions around Newport, Rhode Island, between July and August 1778. In May 1780 he sailed for France and, with the help of Benjamin Franklin and John Temple, got himself accepted as a pupil by Benjamin West in London. On 19 November 1780 he was arrested on suspicion of treason and ultimately released through the efforts of Charles Fox and Edmund Burke. He moved to the Continent, attempted to raised a loan for Connecticut through his father's Dutch bankers, and then returned to Boston.
By December 1783 Trumbull was back in London at the studio of West. After two years painting classical subjects, he turned to the history of the American Revolution. The first paintings in this series, the "The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill" and "The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack of Quebec," were done under the direction of West and were heavily influenced by West's own "Death of General Wolfe at Quebec" (1772). They were completed in the spring of 1786. Trumbull started "The Declaration of Independence." This work took eight years to complete, in part because thirty-six of the forty-eight portraits in it were done from life. His "The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown," "The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton," and "The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton" were also done in West's studio. Meanwhile he had gone to Paris to have his first two American works published as engravings. Finding that his American subjects were not particularly relished in England, he painted a British success, "Sortie Made by the Garrison at Gibraltar." In 1787 and 1789 he revisited Paris to paint portraits of French and British officers. He stayed with Jefferson, who offered him a post as private secretary, but Trumbull declined and in 1789 returned to America.
In Philadelphia Trumbull did a number of portraits, starting with Washington. In 1793 he became private secretary to John Jay, and used the opportunity to return to Europe to supervise the engraving of the work he had already completed. He performed his official duties with distinction, and returned to America in the spring of 1804 with a pretty English wife, Sarah Hope, neé Harvey. He resumed his painting, but his art had declined. In March 1817 he was commissioned by Congress to do four life-size, 12-by-18-foot paintings for the Capitol, which was being restored after suffering damage during the War of 1812. Working in New York City from miniatures previously executed, he took seven years to complete the canvases, for which he was paid $8,000 apiece. The paintings—"The Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga," "The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown," "The Declaration of Independence," and "The Resignation of Washington"—were controversial. The one-eyed Trumbull's greatest skill was as a miniaturist; he had not done large figures well even during his prime.
In 1831 he gave his unsold paintings to Yale College in return for an annuity, and designed a building to hold them, thus creating the first college-affiliated art gallery in the United States. Becoming cantankerous and haughty as disappointments and waning talent clouded his old age, Trumbull published his Autobiography in 1841. He died two years later at the age of 87. The art historian Theodore Sizer concludes that "… no schoolboy but sees the Revolution through his eyes. His 250 to 300 faithful representations, drawn from life, of the principal actors and actions of the Revolution make him at once the chief, the most prolific, and the most competent visual recorder of that heroic period."
SEE ALSO Trumbull Family.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jaffe, Irma B. Patriot Artist of the American Revolution. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975.
Sizer, Theodore. Works of Colonel John Trumbull, Artist of the American Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
Trumbull, John. The Autobiography of Colonel John Trumbull, Patriot Artist, 1756–1843. Edited by Theodore Sizer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.
revised by Harold E. Selesky