Artist

Mather Brown

American painter, active in England; 1761—1831.

John Singleton Copley

American painter, principally active in London after 1774; 1738—1815.

Jean-Antoine Houdon

French sculptor who sometimes created his works from life-masks; 1741—1828.

Charles Willson Peale

American painter, soldier; created first American museum; 1741—1827.

Rembrandt Peale

American painter, son of Charles Willson Peale; 1778—1860.

Paul Revere

Artisan, Boston revolutionary, militia soldier, foundryman; 1735—1818.

Gilbert Stuart

American painter of quintessential portraits, including George Washington; 1755—1828.

Thomas Sully

British-born painter, mainly of portraits, extended the iconography of the Revolution and the Founding Fathers into the 19th century; 1783—1872.

By attacking slavery more fiercely than ever before, Revolutionary Americans freed tens of thousands of slaves. But the Revolution’s libertarian and egalitarian message had perverse consequences. It forced those Southerners who chose to retain slavery to fall back on the alleged racial deficiencies of blacks as a justification for an institution that hitherto they had taken for granted and had never before needed to justify. The anti-slavery movement that arose out of the Revolution inadvertently produced racism in America.

— Gordon S. Wood

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)