John Trumbull (1756-1843)

John Trumbull was the first American artist to produce history paintings dealing with contemporary American events (many of these paintings were begun in England under the guidance of Benjamin West).

Trumbull served in the Continental army from 1775 to 1777. For a brief time he was Washington’s aide-de-camp. He ended his military career at the age of twenty-one. He reverted to his early interest, painting, and pursued it for a time in America, chiefly in Boston, and then, from 1780, in London. His studies there with Benjamin West were interrupted by his arrest as a suspected spy, followed by an eight-month imprisonment. After he was freed, he returned to America. In 1784 Trumbull was back in London, once more studying under West; he remained there until 1789. It was there that he began to work on his paintings of the great battles. In the twelve battle scenes painted between 1786 and 1794, Trumbull caught with masterly skill the excitement and sweep of the campaigns.

Trumbull’s The Declaration of Independence, of 1786 – 1797, is a painting of particular historical significance. Of the forty-eight figures crowded into the canvas, thirty-six were painted from life. Standing at the table before John Hancock are John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In 1794 Trumbull sailed again for London, this time as secretary to John Jay; he remained abroad until 1804. After one more period in London, 1808—1816, he settled finally in America. In 1818, when he was past sixty and his powers as an artist were on the wane, Trumbull was finally commissioned to paint a series of Revolutionary War scenes for the Capitol rotunda in Washington.

The Hudson RiverSchool1

America's first group of landscape painters came to be known as the Hudson River School, even though the vistas they painted extended into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Adirondacks of western Massachusetts, the Connecticut River Valley, and up and down the eastern coast of the United States.

Cole, the greatest talent among the founders of the Hudson RiverSchool, was born in Lancashire, England. His family came to Philadelphia in 1819, when he was eighteen, and shortly afterwards settled on the frontier in Steubenvill, Ohio. Here his love of the wild beauty of the continent was nourished, and since he could not gain a livelihood from landscape painting, he roamed from village to village as a portrait painter.

In 1823 and 1824 he worked at his landscape painting in Philadelphia and then, in 1825, moved with his family to New York where his landscapes were "discovered". Cole's landscapes drew increasing appreciation, and when he returned to his native England at the age of twenty-eight he was regarded as one of America's painters.

The typical Hudson RiverSchool scene consists of a portion of virgin landscape, extending into the far-off distance; often, tiny foreground figures are set against it. Sometimes, there is also a blasted tree prominent in the foreground, to suggest to the viewer the desolation of the terrain.