Portraits of Artists

All  |  People You Should Know

Artists  |  British  |  Colonials  |  Enslaved People  |  French  |  Germans  |  Natives  |  Spanish  |  Others

  • Mather BrownAmerican-born painter, active in England (1761—1831)
  • John Singleton CopleyAmerican painter, principally active in London after 1774 (1738—1815)
  • Ralph EarlAmerican painter, principally of portraits (1751—1801)
  • Jean-Antoine HoudonFrench sculptor who sometimes created his works from life-masks (1741—1828)
  • Charles Willson PealeAmerican painter, soldier; created first American museum (1741—1827)
  • Rembrandt PealeAmerican painter, son of Charles Willson Peale (1778—1860)
  • William RushAmerican sculptor (1756—1833)
  • Gilbert StuartAmerican painter of quintessential portraits, including George Washington (1755—1828)
  • Thomas SullyBritish-born painter, mainly of portraits (1783—1872)
  • John TrumbullAmerican artist, soldier at the Battle of Trenton (1756—1843)
  • John VanderlynAmerican artist, protégé of Aaron Burr (1775—1852)
  • Benjamin WestAmerican-born painter who moved to England in 1763 (1738—1820)

Visitors to Monticello often wonder at its practical accessories. Jefferson labored a month to save a minute. His home was impractical from the start — by reason of its very site (on a mountain), by the height given the first version of the building (later disguised in a way that left useless spaces in and around its dome), by the perpetual course of its dismantling and reassembly. To make the house more convenient, he made his daughter and her children live for years in a chaos of artistic second thoughts, sometimes sheltered only by canvas as the roof rose, fell, and assumed new shapes in his mind.

Garry Wills
Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1978)