John Trumbull

John Trumbull painted the images through which Americans picture their own revolution, and he had fought in it. He was the son of a governor of Connecticut, lost the sight of one eye in a childhood accident, graduated from Harvard at seventeen, and served as an aide to Washington and then as a deputy adjutant-general before resigning in a dispute over the date on his commission. He went to London in 1780 to study under Benjamin West and was arrested and imprisoned for seven months in reprisal for the execution of Major Andre, released on West's intercession with the king. He then spent years travelling to sketch the surviving participants of the war from life, which is why the faces in his paintings are portraits rather than types. The Declaration of Independence, the Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, the Death of General Warren at Bunker's Hill and the Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar are the results. Four of them hang in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol, and the Declaration is on the back of the two-dollar bill. The Gibraltar picture, painted in 1789, shows the British garrison's sally against the Spanish lines during the great siege and was admired in London as the work of an American who had recently been an enemy. He ran the American Academy of the Fine Arts badly for many years and died poor, having sold his collection to Yale for an annuity. The Declaration of Independence is not a record of a signing. No such scene occurred: the delegates signed over months, and Trumbull painted the drafting committee presenting its text, with faces gathered one at a time across two decades and blank spaces where he could find no likeness. He was open about it. He also served as a secretary to John Jay in London during the treaty negotiations of 1794, which is an unusual second career for a painter.

• Lived: 1756 CE – 1843 CE
• Nationality: American
• Roles: artist