The farewell tour

Mark Ostow

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John Trumbull
General George Washington at Trenton
1792
Oil on canvas
Gift of the Society of the Cincinnati in Connecticut

Here is Washington as painted by Colonel John Trumbull, whose father was a colonial governor of Connecticut. He wanted to be an artist, and his father, of course, said, “There’s no way you can be an artist in America. You have to go to a place called Harvard and become a lawyer, so you can take care of the family business when you get older.” Trumbull said, “All right, I’ll go. But I need to meet this painter, John Singleton Copley, because he actually is making a living, I’ve been told, and I want to meet him.” And so he did.

And Trumbull ended up meeting, at a very young age, key members of the American artistic community, a number of whom ended up working in London and making a lot of money. They sent Trumbull back to chronicle the American Revolutionary battles, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Washington resigning his military commission. Trumbull had been an aide-de-camp to Washington during the war and venerated him.