John Trumbull

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Trumbull, John

Born June 6, 1756, in Lebanon, Conn.; died Nov. 10, 1843, in New York City. American painter. Pupil of B. West in London.

Trumbull was one of G. Washington’s aides-de-camp during the American Revolution (1775–83). From 1794 to 1804 and from 1808 to 1815 he lived in London. From 1817 to 1836 he headed the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York. Trumbull painted small, accurate portraits of personalities in the struggle for independence (R. Izard, 1793, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven). His works also include patriotic historical paintings devoted to contemporary themes. Traditional academic composition and theatrical movement were combined in Trumbull’s historical paintings with a sense of heartfelt enthusiasm and with realistic depiction of figures (Battle of Bunker’s Hill, The Declaration of Independence, both 1786–94, Yale University Art Gallery).

REFERENCE

Sizer, T. The Works of Colonel John Trumbull, Artist of the American Revolution. New Haven, 1950.

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Despite the poor quality of his enlargements, John Trumbull remains the most important artistic chronicler of the struggle for American independence.

Artist of the American Revolution: both soldier and artist, John Trumbull saw the war for independence firsthand and was moved to memorialize the historic events on canvas. (History: Struggle for Freedom)

Caption: John Trumbull: Portrait of Alexander Hamilton.

Keys to immortality

The John Trumbull Collection, for example, contains his masterpieces such as "George Washington Before the Battle of Trenton" and "The Declaration of Independence."

Valley Tech students attend Yale Model UN parley

These Broadway versions of the Founders, plucked from their solemn poses in John Trumbull's famous portrait and forced to tread the boards, are fractious ideologues floundering in a fudged timeline as they squabble their way through the summer of 1776 at Philadelphia's Continental Congress.

1776, all over again: a 1969 musical about the Declaration of Independence is back

(16) If one is going to discuss the John Trumbull painting, the "Interactive John Trumball's Declaration of Independence" website allows users to scroll over any of the men represented and find out his identity.

Reconstructing the Declaration of Independence and the committee of five for digital natives

Alternating Washington's turns in the chair with episodes in the lives of painters such as John Trumbull and Gilbert Stuart, he shows us how the course of human events in the young nation helped to break new ground in image-making as well.

National subject

Sixteen-year-old John Trumbull, for example, borrowed William Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty of 1753 from the Harvard College Library on 28 February 1772.

Janice G. Schimmelman. Books on Art in Early America: Books on Art, Aesthetics and Instruction Available in American Libraries and Bookstores through 1815

However, the identification of the familiar painting by John Trumbull on page 33 as "The Signing of the Declaration of Independence" is inaccurate.

The history of history

From British artist John Trumbull informing Martha Washington that is he sending her an engraving of one of his portraits of her husband (which engraving still hangs in Mount Vernon today), to Queen Victoria offering consolation to Mary Todd Lincoln, to a girl with a pen pal in India asking Jacqueline Kennedy if she can accompany the first lady on a trip to that country, to Laura Bush writing a letter to the children of American after 9/11 to reassure them that people love and care about them and are looking out for their safety, "Letters To The White House" is a compendium of bits of heretofore obscure White House history that spans two hundred years.

Dear First Lady

The example below uses a famous painting by John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, as the basis of information about an historical event.

A picture is worth 20 questions

The 204 Harvard men included the painter John Trumbull and congressman Fisher Ames but most became lawyers, doctors, business professionals or politicians or followed their fathers as planters and merchants.

Revolutionary generation; Harvard men and the consequences of independence

Louis Khan's 1953 Yale University Art Gallery, built to house John Trumbull's 1832 gift of 100 paintings, was the fast modernist addition to Yale's gothic campus.