The Revolutionary leaders never intended to create an original and peculiar indigenous culture. Despite all their talk of American exceptionalism and American virtue in contrast with European corruption, they were seeking not to cut themselves off from Europe’s cultural heritage but to embrace it and in fact to fulfill it. It is a mistake to view America’s post-Revolutionary emulation of Europe as a legacy of helpless dependence passed on from colonial days. Americans imitated European styles and forms not because in their naïveté they could nothing else but because they wanted to.... Their revolution was very much an international affair, an attempt to fulfill the cosmopolitan dreams of the Enlightenment.
Thomas Gainsborough (1727—88)
Oil on canvas; 127.5 x 107 cm. National Trust, Knole, Kent, England.
Oil on canvas; Height: 244 cm (96.1 in). Width: 152.4 cm (60 in). Kenwood House, English Heritage; London, England.
Oil on canvas, feigned oval; 29 7/8 in. x 24 7/8 in. (760 mm x 631 mm). National Portrait Gallery, London, England.
Oil on canvas; 238.8 × 158.7 cm (94 × 62.5 in). Royal Collection Trust, Buckingham Palace, London, England.
Oil on canvas; 71 × 40 cm (28 × 15.7 in). Private collection ???
Admiral Lord George Brydges Rodney (1719—92)
Oil on canvas; 29 1/2 in. x 24 1/2 in. (749 mm x 622 mm). National Portrait Gallery, London, England.
Stipple and line engraving; paper size with decorative border: 11 1/8 in. x 7 5/8 in.
Oil on canvas; 142 x 119 cm. City of London Corporation, Guildhall Art Gallery, London, England.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)