The Painter's Chair

by Hugh Howard

  Upon his resignation from the military in 1777, he returned for a time to the family home in Lebanon, Connecticut, where he resumed painting. His family continued to exert pressure on him to pursue something more important than art. Undeterred, he produced portraits of relatives, friends, and even himself. He tried his hand at history painting, too, on canvases portraying biblical, mythological, and classical personages such as Elisha and Brutus. These varied experiments helped him realize how much he had yet to learn. His figures were ill-proportioned, their eyes too big. His canvases lacked a sense of depth, sharing more with the dry, flattened character of the engravings he was copying than with Copley’s richly detailed paintings. That man, from whom he might have learned the most, was now gone (Copley had sailed for England in 1774), but Trumbull moved to Boston, hoping to find instruction and perhaps a few painting commissions. Once there, he took his turn at Mr. Smibert’s.

  He found the Painting Room on Queen Street a ready-made artist’s milieu (he paid as rent for Smibert’s “Chamber” the sum of £61.6. “in Old Emission Currency”). He made copies of the Old Master paintings, including van Dyck’s Cardinal Bentivoglio, Raphael’s Madonna della Sedia, and Poussin’s Continence of Scipio. He made drawings from life. Given access to the art collection of the wealthy merchant John Hancock, he even painted a “Half length portrait of Washington,” a copy of the portrait Charles Willson Peale had painted for Hancock, then president of the Continental Congress, in the summer of 1776.

  His time in Boston produced other dividends. He dabbled in the family merchant business during those months, buying and selling commodities and investing in three shipping vessels. His investments proved profitable, and he used some of the proceeds to purchase a number of Smibert canvases. Whatever social inferiority he had felt at Washington’s Vassall House headquarters was gradually forgotten as he gained membership in an informal circle of Harvard alumni. Trumbull, now aged twenty-three, had attained a new maturity; he felt at ease with these up-and-coming gentlemen, men possessed of aspirations to power and influence in politics, law, diplomacy, or other professions. Trumbull’s rooms became their meeting place, and there he painted their portraits and engaged the young aristocrats in conversation.

  By the fall of 1779, he reached a new resolve: He would travel abroad. The combination of his modest success in trade and the pressure exerted by his friends and family finally persuaded Trumbull, as he put it, “to undertake the management of a considerable speculation, which required a voyage to Eu rope, and promised (upon paper) great results.” Another Boston friend had obtained assurances from the British foreign secretary that, despite the state of war, Trumbull might study art in England, as long as he avoided the taint of politics. So the artist-merchant sailed across the Atlantic, bound first for France, with two goals in mind. First would be his “mercantile project”; should that prove a failure, he acknowledged, it would leave “the road . . . open for pursuing my study of the arts.”12

  TRY AS HE might, Gilbert Stuart was having little success in capturing his imprisoned friend Trumbull on the canvas. He prided himself on his gift for entertaining his sitters with his anecdotes, but the spirits of the man sitting opposite him seemed quite earthbound, entirely unavailable to his most imaginative flights of conversational fancy. That meant the face emerging ever so slowly lacked expression, and the eyes had a dim and faraway look. Gone were the bracing enthusiasm and seriousness Trumbull had brought to West’s studio on his arrival the previous summer.

  Stuart was unaccustomed to finding it so difficult to spark a sitter’s interest. After all, he had no trouble in casting Trumbull’s circumstances in a warm and optimistic light. His friend still hadn’t been formally charged, and, although he was confined, his quarters were comfortable and spacious enough to enable him to work. When not posing, Trumbull worked at the easel, and he was progressing nicely on his copy of Benjamin West’s own copy of Correggio’s Saint Jerome at Parma. His life was hardly solitary, as he had numerous guests. Things really could be a great deal worse.

  Stuart also knew very well that there is no substitute for having friends in high places, and even Trumbull had to admit he had his share here in Eu rope. To start with, there was Benjamin Franklin. Trumbull had made his war time crossing of the Atlantic on a French ship, La Né-gresse. Almost as soon as he stepped ashore in France, he had discovered that his commercial venture was doomed, since news of the British capture of Charleston, South Carolina, had led to a precipitous decline in the valuation of his American securities. So Trumbull had resorted to his backup plan of finding proper instruction in painting. He sought out Benjamin Franklin, minister plenipotentiary to France, who provided him with a letter of reference to another highly placed American, namely, Benjamin West.

  Stuart had been at hand when Trumbull arrived at West’s studio and witnessed the great painter’s open-armed hospitality, the same welcome with which Stuart had been greeted two years earlier. His Eu rope an mission being mercantile in nature, Trumbull had arrived without portfolio. West set him to work to make a “specimen” painting. Trumbull chose a small roundel of a mother and two children to copy. Unbeknownst to him, it was a copy of a work by Raphael, and West was immediately impressed with his new pupil’s taste. Stuart had helped settle the stranger into the well-equipped studio, and he watched Trumbull’s progress. When the copy was finished, West examined it with care and declared, “Mr. Trumbull, I have no hesitation to say that nature intended you for a painter.”13By then, the two younger men were friends, and Trumbull was settling into his new place, preparing to learn both from his new master and from Stuart, who worked at the next easel. Just weeks later, his arrest abruptly interrupted his tutelage.

  Upon learning of his student’s imprisonment, West had sought an audience with King George III. He hurried to Buckingham House, concerned for his own status as the king’s history painter and for the life of his young countryman. He soon received assurances on both counts, though the king would not agree to intervene and order Trumbull’s release. Someone else would have to be found to plead his case, but as he worked on his portrait of Trumbull, Stuart knew that a powerful Parliamentarian named Charles James Fox was sympathetic and had already been to visit Trumbull. Though Fox’s Whig party was out of power, as part of the loyal opposition to Prime Minister Lord North the man still carried wide influence. Yet, for all John Trumbull knew, he might remain “Bridewell Jack” indefinitely, and his hours of solitude in his prison room allowed him to contemplate the paradoxes of his own character. He was a man who seemed forever in conflict with himself, always looking to balance the competing impulses of his sense of duty and his artistic sensibility, even as he wrestled with the rectitude of his patrician upbringing and his native curiosity.

  The dull-eyed, long-nosed, and expressionless sitter before Gilbert Stuart displayed such sullenness that, after a week of on-again, off-again attempts to capture the character of his Connecticut friend, Stuart decided to give it up. As Trumbull explained, he “could make nothing of my damn’d sallow face.”14

  I V.

  July 1781 . . . The Manse De Neufville . . . Amsterdam

  TRUMBULL'S SENSE OF relief at his release must have been palpable. In the comfortable confines of his new accommodations, he could peacefully contemplate his first twenty-five years. In a life already full of incident, he had tried on the roles of scholar, teacher, soldier, merchant, painter, and prisoner. At this moment, however, the description he cherished above all was his most recent. Once again, he had become a free man.

  His release had come about after Trumbull wrote to Charles Fox’s fellow Whig, Edmund Burke, saying, “I am ignominiously imprisoned as a felon.”15Burke was already sympathetic to the American cause (from the floor of Parliament he had repeatedly gone on record as a harsh critic of the war), and he turned up at Bridewell a few days later. After agreeing to take Trumbull’s side, he negotiated a deal for the American’s release. The king would order Trumbull freed if, in return, the pa
inter promised to leave England within thirty days and not to return until the war was over. Trumbull accepted the offer and promptly paid the £400 surety (£100 came from West, £100 from the coffers of John Singleton Copley, and Trumbull was able to raise the rest). Soon after he settled his bill for room and board at Bridewell, Trumbull traveled to Kent and there boarded a ship in the port town of Deal to cross the Strait of Dover, heading for Amsterdam.

  “Immediately on my arrival here Mr. De Neufville invited me to his house,” Trumbull wrote to his father, “where I am at present very hospitably and elegantly entertained.” The De Neufvilles, proprietors of the banking house John De Neufville & Son, had presented him on arrival with letters from Governor Trumbull, who hoped his son would be able to secure a loan in Amsterdam on behalf of the state of Connecticut. Though politically disposed to the American side, the Dutch bankers refused the request out of concerns over war time uncertainties. On a more modest scale, they did agree to provide the young American with the sum of £100, enabling him to contemplate his homeward journey, as he reported to his father, “without the necessity of being under obligations to any person in England.”16

  THOUGHT HE DEN EUF VILLES gave him money, of far greater import than a mere £100 was the presence of what was undoubtedly the most important painting of Trumbull’s young career. Trumbull had arranged to get this, his first portrait of Washington, out of England and into the hands of his Dutch friends. Executed in London the previous autumn, this canvas would be the basis for the first prints made from his work. The meticulously executed mezzotint version of the painting would both establish Trumbull’s reputation and, for the first time, make the face of America’s most essential man recognizable to many Eu rope ans.

  Despite the absence of a sitter, Trumbull had painted the likeness of the General soon after his arrival in England the previous year. He worked from memory, but as Washington’s former aide-de-camp, Trum-bull had clear recollections of his subject. He had observed him on horseback, at his spyglass, and dictating letters to his clerks. Trumbull had dined at his table and joined the General and his officers in conference. Not only were the man’s visage, carriage, and demeanor well known to him, he had earlier made a practice copy of Peale’s 1776 portrait of Washington, the one painted at Hancock’s behest. In the De Neufville George Washington, one could see a bit of Peale as well as signs of the emerging Trumbull.

  The canvas was of medium size—three feet high, twenty-eight inches in width—with the full-length figure of the statuesque General George Washington at its center. Once more his body servant, William Lee, stands behind him, his hand on the mane of the General’s large chestnut horse. Even if the formula was new to Trumbull, he was coming to know something of the conventions of British portraiture. The arrangement of the elements—the hero, his turbaned groom, the horse, all set in a deeper landscape—was popular in London at the time.17Despite the contrived pose, Washington’s posture and his direct gaze give him a look of serene confidence. The meticulous details of the uniform— its buff and deep blue fabrics are highlighted by gold braid—add to the sense that the man portrayed is cool despite the battle raging below.

  Even as Trumbull had waited in prison, the painting had been in the London shop of Valentine Green. The mezzotint engraving Green produced was inscribed, “Painted by J. Trumbull, Esq. of Connecticut 1780. Engraved by V. Green, Mezzotinto, Capital Engraver to His Majesty.” The Green engraving proved popular, as many Eu rope ans were curious about the man who led the Americans. Another mezzotint of Trumbull’s painting was produced in Brussels later that year, followed by other editions published in Dublin, London, and Paris.18Trumbull profited little from the exploitation of his work, which soon included frontispieces in books and even the appearance of his Washington likeness on cotton fabric used for bed-curtains.

  The De Neufville George Washington would prove to be the sort of painting Trumbull did best. It wasn’t too big: Benjamin West, in fact, had imposed an “injunction” on the size of canvas Trumbull was to attempt based on the younger painter’s physical limitations. Stuart had once remarked of a Trumbull painting, “Why, Trumbull, this looks as though it was drawn by a man with one eye”—and, indeed, it had been.19 Trumbull had lost virtually all the vision in one eye in a childhood accident, a tumble down a flight of stairs at age five. His monocular vision meant that this one-eyed Jack would be better off painting small pictures than big ones.

  JOHN TRUMBULL'S RETURN trip to America proved nightmarishly long. The crossing took more than double the usual time. Gale winds blew the frigate on which he sailed into the North Sea, and Trum-bull sketched seascapes at such unexpected destinations as the Shetland Islands and, later, Bilbao, Spain. A full six months passed before Trum-bull once again set foot on American soil in January 1782, and during his extended sea journey, the deciding battle of the war had been fought at Yorktown. Even as treaty negotiations got under way across the Atlantic, Trumbull arrived in New York with little to show for his first Eu rope an journey, his business ventures having come to nothing. As for his painting, he had been dragged off to Bridewell almost as soon as he had settled into West’s studio.

  Though greeted by a nor’easter that blocked the roads with snow, Trumbull remembered, “I returned to Lebanon, as soon as possible, and occupied myself with closing all accounts respecting my unfortunate mercantile experiments. My recollections were painful—I had thrown away two of the most precious years of life—had encountered many dangers, and suffered many inconveniences, to no purpose. I was seized with a serious illness, which confined me to my bed, and endangered my life; and it was autumn before I had recovered strength sufficient to attempt any occupation.”20The man’s sense of divided allegiance, as it so often would, had left him with a sense of frustration. He had fallen short of accomplishing his goals as both merchant and painter. That said, he did return with one public painting to his credit that would prove a key source of propaganda, a secret weapon of an oddly public sort. Trumbull had left his Washington portrait in the hands of Valentine Green, and the original canvas had made its way to Trumbull’s first patron, the banker De Neufville. Admittedly, Mr. Trumbull was but one unarmed man who assaulted his enemy with nothing more than a graven image. But pictures, especially those of inspiring men such as General Washington, can have surprising power.

  CHAPTER 5

  “The Finest Statuary

  of the World”

  Mr. Houdon . . . comes now for the purpose of lending the aid of his art to transmit you to posterity.

  —Thomas Jefferson, writing to George Washington, July 10, 1785

  I.

  September 14, 1785 . . . Aboard Ship . . . The Delaware River

  EVEN AS HE emerged from a deep sleep, Jean-Antoine Houdon knew in an instant where he was. Far from his Paris atelier in the Bibliothèque du Roi, the Frenchman floated toward consciousness in a world of constant motion. In the blink of an eye, he recognized the familiar but cramped quarters below decks on the London Packet.

  Just two days before, sailors and passengers alike had welcomed the sight of land at the horizon. Although the weather had favored the travelers for most of the transatlantic crossing, one violent wind had torn the foresail from its stays, sending it to the deck with a violent crash. Now, with Philadelphia close by, Monsieur Houdon anticipated tying up at the quay, bringing to a close the longest leg of his trip, a seven-week crossing from Southampton. A shorter, overland journey by stage would follow, one that would take him to Virginia, where his new challenge awaited him.

  Once on deck, Houdon made an amusing sight. Aged forty-four years and short of stature, he looked more like a scamp in a Molière comedy than a man accustomed to the company of the nobility. His eyes were set deep beneath a tall, protruding brow, and he wore neither wig nor powder. His motley clothes were not of his choosing, consisting of a shirt, breeches, and stockings loaned to him by fellow passengers. He had come aboard carrying only his sacs de nuit (overnight needs), though his journey
had begun with vastly more baggage.

  In July he and three assistants assembled 128 cases, bales, boxes, hampers, casks, and baskets on the Paris riverside. With his clothes, tools, and other goods readied to float down the Seine on a barge loaded with freight, Houdon had mounted a diligence (stagecoach) bound for the port of Le Havre. From there the four men sailed to Southampton, making a disagreeable two-day crossing of the English Channel during which winds and rain buffeted the ship, producing an epidemic of seasickness among the passengers. The baggage failed to catch up with his party by July 28, when the London Packet sailed for America at 5:00 A.M.

  Forty-eight days later, Houdon surveyed the calm waters of the Delaware River. He expected no difficulty in finding a tailor, hatter, and shoemaker upon reaching shore, but if dressing himself and his attendants seemed a simple matter, he could not help but wonder whether other missing items might be more difficult to replace in America. He needed the tools of his art, the calipers, brushes, chisels, spatulas, hawks, scrapers, clay cutters, gouges, knives, molds, bowls, and other modeling and mixing tools, as well as sculptor’s clay and casting plaster. He could only hope that the shops of Philadelphia, in a land where the art of sculpture was little known, would have all that he wanted. But America’s largest metropolis, the city on the bluff ahead, looked to the worldly Parisian like a provincial place.

  A modest, plain-spoken man, Houdon had risen far above his origins to reach the pinnacle of his profession. Born the son of a domestique in 1741, Houdon had benefitted from an unexpected turn of fate when his father had become concierge at the École Royale des élèves protégés, the Paris preparatory school linked with the French Academy in Rome. Scraps of sculptor sticks and modeling clay became eight-year-old Jean-Antoine’s toys; making recognizable shapes out of them became his preoccupation. Engaged by what he saw at the school and encouraged by the artists who peopled this world, he earned himself an official place at the school by the time he turned fifteen. Thereafter his student work regularly won prizes, culminating in the Prix de Rome fellowship to the French Academy in Rome in 1764.