Thomas Jefferson (Portrait by John Trumbull)
From Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
John Trumbull (1756-1843)
Oil on wood
1788
10.2 x 8.3 (4 x 3 ¼ inches)
Description: A three-quarter length bust miniature portrait of Thomas Jefferson who is depicted facing slightly to the right. He wears a charcoal grey coat with black collar, a gold shirt and buttons, and a white jabot at the throat. His sandy red hair is unpowdered and ear length. The background is plain.[1]
History: When John Trumbull painted Jefferson from life at his Paris residence in the winter of 1787-1788, the portrait was inserted directly into his small Declaration of Independence. He considered it one of the best of his small portraits, depicting the 44-year old Jefferson as he appeared at the time of the presentation of his great achievement.
On December 19, 1788, Trumbull presented Jefferson with “a little case of with two pictures, one of which I hope you will do me the honor to accept, and the other I beg you to be so good as to offer to Miss Jefferson.” The gift for Jefferson was a miniature of Thomas Paine and the second was a miniature of Jefferson for his daughter Martha. Trumbull made three different miniatures of Jefferson: one for Martha Jefferson, and two others for Jefferson’s friends Maria Cosway and Angelica Schuyler Church.[2]
It is the miniature owned by Martha that now hangs in the Monticello Parlor. This image varies somewhat from the Cosway and Church copies which show Jefferson as a cosmopolite with rolled and powdered hair. Martha’s likeness appears more representative of her father as a Virginian and has a more defiant mien. The little painting remained in her possession until her death in 1836 at which time it went to her daughter, Cornelia. The miniature was inherited by Cornelia’s niece, a daughter of Virginia Randolph Trist, and it remained in the possession of the family until it was acquired in 1958.
Provenance: Martha Jefferson Randolph; by descent to Virginia and Nicholas Trist; by descent to Edmund Jefferson Burke; by purchase to Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1958.
Footnote
- ↑ This article is based on Elizabeth O'Leary's Research Report, July 1988.
- ↑ Stein, Worlds, 124.
