Glorious Lessons

John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution

By: Richard Brookhiser

Narrated by: Rick Adamson

The complicated life and legacy of John Trumbull, whose paintings portrayed both the struggle and the principles that distinguished America's founding moment.

John Trumbull (1756-1843) experienced the American Revolution firsthand-he 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 Trumbull's contemporaries viewed him as a painter, Trumbull thought of himself as a historian.

Richard Brookhiser tells Trumbull's story of acclaim and recognition, a story complicated by provincialism, war, a messy personal life, and, ultimately, changing fashion. He shows how the artist's 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 world-a story as important and as contested today as it was 250 years ago.

©2024 Richard Brookhiser (P)2024 Tantor

Insightful biography told extremely well!

Brookhiser has created a masterful portrait of Colonel John Trumbull. He narrates both the facts of an amazing life and the spirit of our greatest artist of the American Revolution.