The Painter's Chair (17 page)
Read The Painter's Chair Online
Authors: Hugh Howard
In his zigzag five-week tour of Paris he saw paintings by Correggio, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, van Dyck, Fragonard, Tintoretto,
Vero-nese, Poussin, and “Michael Angelo.” But it was
The Death of Henry IV
, by Peter Paul Rubens, at the Luxembourg Palace that he thought “the most perfect of all . . . splendor and harmony are here
wonderfully united—the truth of nature, and the glow of a nature superior to ours.”
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He saw works by Jacques-Louis David, then emerging as the most admired painter in Paris. When he met the man himself in his
studio in the Louvre, David became his “warm and efficient friend” and provided access to still other artists, collectors,
and collections. Trumbull tended to business, too, meeting engravers, among them the auspiciously named Heinrich Güttenberg
(“a plain honest German, industrious, and ambitious of fame, and one of the best engravers at present in France”).
A few days into his Paris visit, Trumbull was joined at Mr. Jefferson’s home by another guest, a boyish-looking young Harvard
graduate named Charles Bulfinch. A Grand Tourist nearing the end of an eighteen-month tour that had already taken him to England
and Italy, the young Bostonian had architectural aspirations and was intent upon seeing the sights of Paris. Soon the three
Americans became acquainted with two other visitors to the city. Trumbull first met Mr. and Mrs. Cos-way at the studio of
his new friend, Monsieur David. Richard Cosway was an English miniature painter who had come to paint portraits of the children
of the influential Duc d’Orléans. His wife, Maria, was younger, possessed of both artistic and musical gifts—and as beautiful
as her husband was homely. For much of August and into September, these companions and a varying cast of French aristocrats,
artists, and friends went on daily excursions.
On his return to the Hôtel de Langeac in the evenings, Trumbull made entries in “a journal of each day’s occupation.” He listed
places visited, artworks seen, and those with whom he had traveled that day. More than half a century later, he employed this
diary in compiling his
Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of John Trumbull from 1756 to 1841
. Even then, despite having been edited by the elder ly sensibilities of the eighty-something Trumbull, the retrospective
text still managed to convey a youthful hunger for beauty in his wide-eyed reactions to the art, architecture, and gardens.
The
Autobiography
also proved to be an invaluable text for historians attempting to understand Trumbull, the Paris of the day, and his host,
Mr. Jefferson. Yet what the painter left unsaid in his day-to-day accounting of events leaves the attentive reader curious,
even querulous.
Trumbull himself interrupts his exacting account with an apology. He explains that, beginning with August 19, 1786, “[M]y
manuscript fails me; I presume that one if not two sheets, have perished entirely.” For a man who left an immense trove of
documents at his death, as well as his thorough
Autobiography
, the loss is perplexing—particularly since the lacuna coincides with the days of Mr. Jefferson’s now famous flirtation with
Maria Cosway. Trumbull acknowledges the couple’s friendship: “Mr. Jefferson joined our party almost daily [during these twenty
days]; and here commenced his acquaintance with Mrs. Cosway.” Then he moves on, dispassionately, to describe other people
and places.
The dalliance between Jefferson and the radiant Mrs. Cosway—in her portraits, one sees a tousle of blonde hair, porcelain
skin, perfect features, and dark, intelligent eyes into whose depths a lonely man might well fall—is today mysterious only
as to the extent of the couple’s physical intimacies. From their letters, most of them published long after Trumbull’s death,
the passion on both sides is apparent to any reader. As Jefferson himself wrote to Cosway in the most famous of those letters,
he felt acutely the emotional heat, having learned “how imprudent it is to place our affections, without reserve, on objects
you must so soon lose.”
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The philosopher-politician composed the letter as a debate between his head and heart, with reason prevailing in the end.
Even at the remove of a half a century, Trumbull must have known more about the Jefferson-Cosway relationship than he admitted.
He had joined them in their coach, walked the same garden paths, and been privy to their conversations on many occasions in
those days and weeks. Jefferson shared his home with Trumbull during this time, too, and upon returning there each evening,
one might reasonably conjecture, the smitten Virginian might have shared confidences or, at the very least, been unable to
mask all his feelings.
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Jefferson later trusted Trumbull as his go-between, to deliver letters he was reluctant to send by less secure means, some
of them to Mrs. Cosway. Yet when he came to describe the relationship he closely observed, the elderly Trumbull chose silence
over indiscretion. A man of his time, he left the provocative interlude in Mr.
WHEN JEFFERSON LEASED the Hôtel de Langeac, its rooms were empty, from the large bedchambers to the grand oval salon with
the trompe-l’oeil rising sun on its ceiling. He refused to rent what he needed, since the fee for furnishings and other house
hold equipment would have amounted to 40 percent per year. Instead, he went shopping in an urban landscape dense with artisans,
shops, and merchants.
As was his punctilious habit, he recorded his purchases in his
Memorandum Books
. These included bed linens and blankets, along with an armoire in which to store them. He bought mattresses, carpets, stoves,
andirons, and wood. For his kitchen and dining room, he purchased a coffee mill, teapots, silver flatware, and china. He acquired
furniture, too, including two
lits de repos
(daybeds), easy chairs in which to relax, and both arm-and side chairs for dining. Mirrors,
biscuit
figurines, gaming tables, chandeliers, white porcelain vases, girandoles, silk damask draperies, and other goods came later.
Not satisfied with the choices in Paris, he wrote to his friend Abigail Adams, asking her to purchase napkins and a tablecloth
for him in London. Acquisitive by nature, he relished the entire process, feeding his appetite for and appreciation of craftsmanship,
elegance, and the neoclassical taste of the day.
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Within months of his arrival, he began acquiring objets d’art, too, both at auction and from dealers. Although his friendship
with Houdon led him to purchase a number of the sculptor’s terra-cotta patinated busts, he tended not to buy original works
by living artists but chose instead to seek copies of great works from the past by the likes of Raphael, Leonardo, Titian,
Rubens, and others. He favored portraits of the great and estimable, and a good many pictures still remained on his desiderata
by the time his guest arrived. He sought Trumbull’s guidance for images of Shakespeare, Columbus, and others.
A bond developed between the two men, growing by the day. They found they shared a reverence for the thinkers Isaac Newton
and John Locke (Trumbull had copied their portraits years earlier, and Jefferson wanted to include them in his pantheon).
After long days shared seeing the sights of Paris together, they would return to the Hôtel de Langeac with impressions of
the art and architecture they had seen. A man famed for both his curiosity and his courtly manners, Jefferson was more interested
in learning from others than in hearing the sound of his own voice. Here he had Trumbull to himself, in effect an artist-in-residence.
Many of their enthusiasms beyond the world of art overlapped, too, as they saw in the signs of political unrest in France
a welcome echo of the revolution in individual freedom that American independence represented.
When the colonel arrived in Paris, his baggage included the two completed canvases that portrayed the battle scenes at Bunker
Hill and Quebec. Primed by their earlier exchange in London, Jefferson was eager to see what Trumbull had wrought, and, as
the painter reported, his host very much approved of “the first fruits of my national enterprise” and offered his “warm approbation.”
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Jefferson went further, insisting the artworks be displayed to others in Paris, too. He spread the word across the Atlantic,
writing some days later to Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College. “A countryman of yours,” he advised Stiles, “has paid us
a visit here, and brought with him two pictures which are the admiration of the Connoisseurs. His natural talents for this
art seem almost unparalleled.”
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Trumbull laid out his plans in detail for Jefferson. His hope was that he and the publisher di Poggi would be able to find
a skilled artisan to engrave the images, in order that affordable prints could be offered for sale in America. His aspiration
went beyond these two early battles, at both of which the British had prevailed. Trumbull planned to paint other revolutionary
military scenes, specifically those at Princeton and Trenton, along with the surrenders at Saratoga and Yorktown, all confrontations
from which the Continental Army emerged victorious. Jefferson became a partisan, believing whole-heartedly in Trumbull’s national
work. He recognized that the paintings could open the eyes of countless Americans to the merit of history painting and enable
them to contemplate the late, great days of the fight for independence.
IN THE COMMODIOUS house near the city’s wall, a fresh idea came to them.
They were seated in Mr. Jefferson’s library. Even when the sun had set, the room remained surprisingly bright, with candlelight
reflecting off the decorative gilding, the lightly painted walls, and the mirrors in the room. Books were everywhere, since
Jefferson was acquiring them at a rate approaching a book a day.
As they talked of Trumbull’s series, a question made its way to the surface. It was a bit provocative in that it was contrary
to the tradition of history painting. The general notion they floated was whether or not the subject matter of all of Trumbull’s
history paintings had to be military.
Both men knew the history of the war very well; in truth, General Washington’s genius had been to play the fox more often
than the lion, choosing to disappear on numerous occasions rather than confront the superior force of his enemy. The Revolution
certainly had had its essential military moments, but didn’t politics and even philosophy loom as large as the scenes filled
with cannon and encampments? The war wasn’t an end in itself, after all, but a means of advancing the larger cause of individual
freedom. Yet history paintings had traditionally relied upon well-known stories from classical antiquity, the Bible, or the
pathos of a death scene or battle to provide emotional content.
Perhaps the particular idea was Jefferson’s brainchild; undoubtedly it arrived with the power of an epiphany. But here it
was:
Why not record the events of July 4, 1776?
The formulation suited both men nicely. For Jefferson, it was a memory, a defining moment for him and his country. He had
fought in no battles, yet here he was the central figure in a truly heroic scene. For Trumbull, it became a great pictorial
possibility. They talked of the circumstances. Jefferson volunteered as a witness and a participant to help Trumbull bring
the scene to life on canvas. The challenge was, as Trum-bull saw it, “to convey an Idea of the Room in which congress sat.”
Jefferson, no artist but eager to help, put pen to paper. On a small sheet, he drew a crude floor plan of the assembly room
on the ground floor of the old State House in Philadelphia where the Continental Congress gathered. He indicated the position
of the doors and the dais. Having examined what Jefferson sketched, Trumbull took up the pencil. Working on the facing half
of the same sheet, he added to Jefferson’s rudimentary plan, and a more sophisticated rendering of the room emerged. Jefferson
told Trumbull who had been in attendance, who played what role, and the artist began to people the sketch with the players.
There were Adams and Franklin; and Jefferson; and John Hancock, too, the president of the Congress. When he needed a model
for the president’s chair, Trumbull looked around him, and chose an oval-back fauteuil at hand in Jefferson’s salon at the
Hôtel de Langeac. The two men, enraptured by the moment, planned the painting.
