Glorious Lessons

The complicated life and legacy of John Trumbull, whose paintings portrayed both the struggle and the principles that distinguished Americas founding moment Nuanced, engaging and incisive.Stephen Brumwell, Wall Street Journal Succinct, both scholarly and direct. . . . Wonderful art history.Brian T. Allen, National Review John Trumbull (17561843) experienced the American Revolution firsthandhe served as aid to George Washington and Horatio Gates, was shot at, and was jailed as a spy. He made it his mission to record the war, giving visual form to what most citizens of the new United States thought: that they had brought into the world a great and unprecedented political experiment. His purpose, he wrote, was to preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man. Although Trumbulls contemporaries viewed him as a painter, Trumbull thought of himself as a historian. Richard Brookhiser tells Trumbulls story of acclaim and recognition, a story complicated by provincialism, war, a messy personal life, and, ultimately, changing fashion. He shows how the artists fifty-year project embodied the meaning of American exceptionalism and played a key role in defining the values of the new country. Trumbull depicted the story of self-rule in the modern worlda story as important and as contested today as it was 250 years ago.