Oil on canvas; 68 1/2 x 87 in. (174.0 x 221.0 cm). Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. (An oil study is owned by the New-York Historical Society, New York, NY; there is also an excellent copy, in a smaller size by Asher B. Durand, c. 1831 - 35, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.)
This is considered to be Vanderlyn’s masterpiece and one of the most advanced paintings of its day.
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.