Trumbull, John (1756-1843)

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John Trumbull (1756-1843)

Artist

Early Life. Son of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, John Trumbull was born in Lebanon, Connecticut. Coming from a wealthy and privileged background, Trumbull resolved to pursue his artistic aspirations from an early age. After graduating from Harvard in 1773, Trumbull painted his first work, The Death of Paulus Aemilius at the Battle of Cannae. Although its subject is classical, this painting expresses his political concerns about the escalating tensions between Britain and the colonies. Soon after the outbreak of the Revolution at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, his sympathy for the cause spurred him to join the army as an adjutant to Gen. Joseph Spencer. In 1776 Gen. Horatio Gates appointed Trumbull a deputy adjutant general, giving him the rank of colonel. The following year, however, Trumbull resigned from the army, angered by a dispute over the date of his commission from the Continental Congress. Returning to artistic activities, he traveled to London in 1780 to study with the renowned painter Benjamin West.

Revolutionary War Series. In 1784 West proposed that Trumbull take over a project that West had started: a series of paintings on the American Revolution. The resulting paintings became Trumbell’s best-known works. Combining his artistic interests and revolutionary loyalties, Trumbull viewed his role in this undertaking as that of a historian “commemorating the great events of our country’s revolution.” He shared with historians of his time the conviction that history had to teach a lesson, not just record the past. Thus, Trumbull described his primary motives as: “to preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man; to give the present and the future sons of oppression and misfortune, such glorious lessons of their rights, and of the spirit with which they should assert and support them, and even to transmit to their descendants, the personal resemblance of those who have been the great actors in those illustrious scenes, were objects which gave a dignity to the profession, peculiar to my situation.” Through these paintings Trumbull made an important contribution to the artistic development of the new nation, and he helped shape American images of the Revolution.

Battle Paintings. The first of these works was The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill (1786), portraying the death of revolutionary leader Joseph Warren, whose death at Bunker Hill turned him into a martyr for the revolutionary cause. The realistic details are drawn from Trumbull’s own experience as an eyewitness at the battle, but he took important liberties with the facts. For example, he portrayed a British officer, Maj. John Small, as attempting to save General Warren. As Trumbull himself acknowledged, this incident was a “pictorial liberty,” which he included to “do honor to Major Small who … was distinguished for his humanity and kindness to American prisoners.” This approach was consistent with Trumbull’s aim to inculcate moral lessons in his audience. For him these higher truths took precedence over the factual accuracy of particular details. He followed this painting with other battle scenes—The Death of General Montgomery at the Battle of Quebec (1786), The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton (1786–circa 1828), and The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton (circa 1789–circa 1831).

The Declaration of Independence. In 1786 Trumbull turned to a civil event for the subject of his next painting—The Declaration of Independence. Again he conveyed a moral message in his choice of subject: by including a nonmilitary painting in a series designed to document the American war of independence, he underscored that in contrast to other nations the United States had its origins in a rational assertion of abstract principle rather than in the violence and caprice of monarchs. As usual he painstakingly sought to achieve authentic and realistic portraits of the figures in the painting, but he also departed from the historical record, taking liberties that heightened the dramatic effect of the painting and the symbolic importance of the event. The Declaration of Independence conflated into one day a whole series of events related to the drafting and approval of this document. The painting depicts not the signing of the Declaration but the presentation of the document to John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, by the drafting committee. Trumbull placed the members of this committee—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston—at the center of the scene to highlight their role in this event. He also included signers of the Declaration who had not actually been present on the day the document was signed. In fact, the signers were never assembled as a group in the way that Trumbull depicted them. Most of the delegates signed the Declaration of Indepence on 2 August 1776, and other signatures were added until some time before the publication of the signed document on 19 January 1777.

Later Life. In 1817 the House of Representatives commissioned Trumbull to paint four pictures for the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. He and President James Madison decided that the subjects of these works should be the Declaration of Independence, the surrender of Gen. John Burgoyne at Saratoga, Gen. Charles Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, and the resignation of Gen. George Washington. The installation of these paintings in the Rotunda in 1826 was the crowning achievement of Trumbull’s artistic career, and they were the last major, original history paintings before his death in 1843.