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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] John Trumbull Biography TRUMBULL,
John (1756-1843). An American historical and portrait painter. The son of
Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut, he was born at Lebanon, Conn., June
.6, 1756, graduated at Harvard in 1773, and two years later entered the
Continental army. Having made for Washington a
plan of the British works before Boston Neck, he was appointed an aid-de-camp,
and the following year a deputy adjutant general under Gates.
He retired from the army in 1777, but in 1778 he took part as a volunteer in
General Sullivan's expedition to Rhode Island; and in 1780 he became a pupil of
Benjamin West, in London. The news of André's execution fastened upon him the
suspicion of being a spy, and he was imprisoned for eight months. In 1782 he
returned to America and remained until 1784, when he went back to London to
continue his studies under West. Here he painted "Battle of Bunker
Hill" (1786), and "Death of General Montgomery" (1786), now in
the Yale University Art Gallery. The four pictures, "The Signing of the
Declaration of Independence," "Surrender of Burgoyne,"
"Surrender of Cornwallis," "Resignation of Washington at
Annapolis," in the Capitol at Washington, were finished in 1824 after eight
years of labor. Most of his pictures he presented to Yale in return for an
annuity of $1000. Among the principal ones, besides those mentioned above, are,
"Battle of Princeton" (1795), "Battle of Trenton," and
portraits of Washington, Hamilton, the Duke
of Wellington, and others. In the City Hall, New York, are ten portraits by
him, including those of Washington, George Clinton, John
Jay, and Alexander Hamilton. The Metropolitan Museum possesses a portrait of
Alexander Hamilton, and one of Robert Lenox is in the New York Public Library.
Others include General and Mrs. Washington, in the National Museum, Washington;
John Adams, Jonathan Trumbull (John Trumbull's father), and Rufus King. His work
is good in composition and color, and is pervaded by a healthy realism, but it
deteriorated. In 1789 he returned to America and from 1794 he served for seven
years under Jay as Secretary of Legation in England. From 1816 to I825 he was
president of the Academy of Fine Arts in New York, in which city he died, Nov.
10, 1841. Consult his Autobiography
(New York, 1841) and Samuel Isham, History
of American Painting (new ed., New York, 1915). |