Oil on canvas; 131 x 102 cm (51 9/16 x 40 3/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Jay is depicted in the academic robes he wore when Harvard awarded him an honorary degree in 1790.
Oil on canvas; 131 x 102 cm (51 9/16 x 40 3/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Jay is depicted in the academic robes he wore when Harvard awarded him an honorary degree in 1790.
[George] Mason’s obvious legacy is in his contribution to America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence through the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Constitution through his role at the Philadelphia Convention, and the Bill of Rights through his dogged opposition to a Constitution without one. Mason may have taken a circumscribed view of the rights he advocated — limiting the right of representation to white men or restricting freedom of the press to a ban on prior restraint — but he put words on paper that could be given more expansive meanings by later generations.