Oil on canvas; 36 1/4 x 28 in. ( 92.1 x 71.1 cm ). New-York Historical Society, New York, NY. (Copy of the original by Trumbull, which is in the Lenox Collection of the New York Public Library.)
Robert Lenox (1759—1839) was a prosperous New York merchant who was born in Scotland. He served as president of the New York Chamber of Commerce from 1826 to 1839.
But as an intellectual enterprise ... [Jefferson’s University of Virgina] proved less satisfactory to its creator when it opened the year before he died. The students turned out be not so much an aristocracy of virtue and talent as a gang of rowdy youths with a taste for drink, gambling, breaking windows, firing guns into the air, and thrashing professors who tried to stop them. The horrified Jefferson came down from his mountain to Charlottesville to reprimand them. Flanked by his dear friends and fellow trustees James Madison and James Monroe, the frail eighty-two-year-old patriarch drew himself up to his full six foot two, began to speak — and burst into tears.