Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
The Painter's Chair (16 page)
Though he had told Peale that he regarded the Patriots as having earned a place “among the greatest characters of antiquity,”
West’s American Revolution series had ended abruptly with this half-finished study for a much larger painting. But during
1784 he came to recognize that he had an apprentice whose emerging skills and commitment to the American cause might enable
him to make the series his own. He broached the idea, and Trumbull wrote to his brother late that year, “Mr. West has mentioned
my doing . . . the great events of the revolution.”
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Trumbull began to veer away from portraiture. After completing his copy work for West, Trumbull put his hand to a historical
composition based on Homer’s
Iliad.
The picture,
Priam Returning with the Body of Hector
, cost Trumbull another three months and an investment of ten guineas to pay for its frame and the models he employed.
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It proved a valuable practice piece in the historical vein and was well received by the London critics (one of them termed
it “a considerable advance” on his earlier work).
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West hired him to help with a large royal commission for a set of paintings at Windsor Castle. His apprenticeship advanced,
as he continued learning the language of high art under the guidance of West.
The opportunity “to take up the History of Our Country,” as Trum-bull put it, seemed a noble venture, an opportunity for both
honor and, he hoped, profit. He foresaw a chance to do good for his country and the opportunity to do well for himself.
TRUMBULL BEGAN WITH what he knew. While stationed with his Connecticut regiment years earlier he had witnessed the Battle
of Bunker Hill from afar. Even on the other side of Boston harbor, the cannonades had echoed like peals of thunder. He had
seen the flames in Charlestown and the smoke from the battle that smudged the sky. The memory inspired him a decade later
to paint
The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775
, a canvas that also paid homage to his mentor’s
The Death of General Wolfe.
Trumbull worked in West’s studio under the eye of the veteran painter. His painting would not be a precise record of the events
at Bunker and Breed’s Hills, but Trumbull had talked to participants and, at other times, seen his fellow Colonials in combat.
In a series of careful sketches, he created a staged composition that represented an imagined moment in time that, though
it never quite happened, was still historically accurate in many of its particulars. In short, he grasped that the essence
of history painting is to mix the
real
and the
idealized
. The scale of his new painting was small compared to West’s mural-sized histories. Trumbull’s canvas was a mere thirty-four
inches wide, twenty-five high. It was no accident that the canvas size would also suit future engravers, who would be able
to make a same-size rendering of the painting on their plates.
As Trumbull’s
Battle of Bunker’s Hill
neared completion, in early 1786, West made an occasion of asking Trumbull to a dinner party. “I have invited some of our
brother artists,” West explained, “and I wish you to be of the party.” When the appointed hour came, the host welcomed his
guests to the Painting Room, where, as Trumbull recalled years later, the battle painting had been carefully situated at West’s
instruction to catch the best light. Upon seeing it, reported Trumbull, Reynolds “ran up to my picture,—‘Why, West, what have
you got here?—this is better colored than your works are generally.’
“ ‘Sir Joshua,’ (was the reply,) ‘you mistake—that is not mine—it is the work of this young gentleman, Mr. Trumbull.’ ”
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Another who saw the painting was moved by its portrayal. Abigail Adams, whose husband, John, had become the American minister
to the Court of St. James’s, saw the painting in London in early 1786. “Looking at it my whole frame contracted, my blood
shivered, and I felt a faintness at my heart.” She, too, had witnessed the battle at a distance, in her case from a Braintree
hilltop some nine miles away, where she stood holding the hand of her seven-year-old son, John Quincy. The painting had added
meaning for her since General Warren, the young Boston physician who lay dying in Trumbull’s canvas, had been a dear friend
for years. In writing to her sister back in America, Abigail described Trum-bull as “the first painter who has undertaken
to immortalize by his pencil those great actions, that gave birth to our nation.”
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By February, Trumbull was at work on the second of the revolutionary paintings,
The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec
, using some of the reference material that Peale had provided West. This canvas would portray the bravery of Richard Montgomery
in his attempt “to attack the enemy at the heart,” according to Trumbull, on December 31, 1775. The plan for that night called
for Colonel Benedict Arnold to advance on the city of Quebec from one direction, while Montgomery approached from another.
Although Arnold’s men captured their objective, Montgomery and several of his officers were felled by grapeshot from a naval
cannon. The assault on Quebec ended almost before it had begun, but Trumbull wanted to memorialize the moment for its “brilliancy
of conception and hardihood of attempt.” As the painting began to emerge, Trumbull’s debt to West’s great canvas,
The Death of General Wolfe
, became evident.
With two paintings in the proposed series well under way, West suggested that Antonio di Poggi, an artist-turned-publisher,
might help Trumbull find an engraver on the continent (for obvious reasons, English engravers were reluctant to celebrate
the recent war). Di Poggi and Trumbull reached an understanding, and the Italian soon crossed the Channel to look for a suitable
artisan.
The city of London in 1786 was a diverse place, but to Americans abroad their social world was small. American painters, diplomats,
and merchants dined together often. One afternoon that spring Trumbull was invited to dine with John and Abigail Adams. At
their table that day he made the acquaintance of another Patriot, a red-headed Virginian whose learning and manner charmed
the shy Yankee. Thomas Jefferson, who had traveled to England from his post in Paris to consult with John Adams on diplomatic
matters, seemed to be interested in everything.
The promising young American painter, his character vouched for by his old friend Adams, intrigued Jefferson. The minister
to France issued an invitation: Trumbull ought to come to Paris, “to see and study the fine works there, and to make [Jefferson’s]
house my home, during my stay.”
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Colonel Trumbull’s luck, it seemed, had truly turned.
II.
August 1786 . . . With Mr. Jefferson . . . Paris
MONSIEUR CHEFERSONE,” AS he was known to one Left Bank merchant, had recovered himself. The painful recollection of his wife’s
death, in 1782, was still fresh when his friend James Madison had arranged Jefferson’s appointment as minister to France.
For the master of Monticello, the diplomatic posting possessed a double appeal: He hoped he could quiet the persistent sense
of loss and fulfill his long-held desire to visit what he called “the vaunted scene of Eu rope.”
Jefferson found all the distractions he wished for. He immersed himself in the art and culture of Paris, its food, and its
society. He examined the architecture, sculpture, and painting, gloried in the music, and delighted in the wines. He reveled
in the city’s bookstores, often indulging his tendency to “Bibliomanie,” as he termed his book-buying passion. He made the
acquaintance of artists and architects. He hired Houdon to make a Washington sculpture for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and,
in collaboration with the French antiquarian and architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau, he designed a monumental Capitol for
Richmond in which Houdon’s pedestrian statue was to be installed.
When John Trumbull arrived in France, late in July 1786, after more than two years of intensive study and work at Mr. West’s,
he, like Jefferson, envisioned Paris as a holiday. He brought with him the first two in his projected series of American history
paintings, in order that he, with the assistance of Signor di Poggi, might contract with an engraver for their reproduction.
Jefferson liked nothing better than offering tutelage to young men who entered his circle. This had become a pattern with
nephews, secretaries, and bright young Americans of all sorts (in the years to follow, this inclination would further blossom
with his mentoring of a generation of young architects and in his dream of a state university for Virginia). The arrival of
Trumbull that summer provided an opportunity to expose a promising young American to French artists and Europe an art. The
lack of great art in his homeland worried Jefferson. As he had written to James Madison the previous year, to fail to improve
the “national good taste” would be to risk “barbarism.”
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He recognized in Mr. Trumbull and in his national work a chance to elevate American tastes.
After some months in central Paris, which he found too busy for his liking, Jefferson had moved to a large house on the outskirts
of the city. The Hôtel de Langeac—it wasn’t a hotel at all, but a mansion—had become the American Legation, serving as the
minister’s place of business. There he tended to concerns of trade, the passports of American travelers, and a multitude of
other official matters. The house was also Jefferson’s home away from home, the site of “family dinners” (when his daughter,
Patsy, was home from her convent boarding school) and “great dinners,” at which Jefferson entertained an ever-widening circle
of friends at his table.
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When Trumbull stepped through the gate at the corner of the Champs-Elysées and the rue de Berri, he entered a large courtyard.
Before him stood the grand entrance to the stately three-story house, its height emphasized by the floor-to-ceiling windows
on the ground floor. Originally designed to accommodate a duke’s mistress, the stylish
hôtel
included within its walled perimeter a range of buildings, including stables, servants’ quarters, and a coach house. As Jefferson
had written to Abigail Adams a year earlier, “it has a clever garden to it.”
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A bit wistful for flavors of home, he was attempting to propagate “Indian corn for the use at my own table, to eat green,
in our manner.”
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Jefferson welcomed Trumbull warmly to his spacious house. Within its walls were three separate suites, one of which would
be his guest’s home for the weeks to come. In Trumbull’s time at the Hôtel de Langeac, both Jefferson and Trumbull gained
more from their new acquaintanceship than they could possibly have expected.
TRUE TOJEFFERS ON’ S promise, doors all over Paris opened for Trumbull as he sought to examine the city’s art. Early on in
his tour he visited the Louvre (“fine,
very fine
indeed, the very best thing which I have as yet seen,” he noted in his journal). He thought the Palais-Royal “magnificent.”
He visited palaces, cathedrals, churches, the Sorbonne, and Versailles.
On some days Jefferson accompanied him, but Monsieur Houdon and his pretty bride Marie (they had married only the previous
month) also took a turn as Trumbull’s guides. The Houdons took him to see some of Jean-Antoine’s sculpture and to a waxworks
to view a surgeon’s collection of anatomical models of the human body. At the Louvre they looked at statues, casts, and bas-reliefs.
In the gallery of the French Academy, Trumbull admired Charles Le Brun’s
History of Alexander the Great
, a series of history paintings he thought “among the finest things which have ever been produced—
perhaps the finest.
” He was unimpressed by the academy’s drawing room, which he thought less convenient than those he knew at the Royal Academy
in London.
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