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Oil on canvas; 182.1 x 229.7 cm (71 11/16 x 90 7/16 in). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
One of three versions: the second is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; a third, dated 1782, is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Watson and the Shark, 1778
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.
Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1978)