Today the American artist John Trumbull (1746-1843) is best known for his iconic paintings of American history, including The Declaration of Independence, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17, 1775. He also painted portraits of famous early Americans such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. He painted Alexander Hamilton numerous times, with one of these portraits inspiring Hamilton’s likeness on the ten dollar bill.
Trumbull was himself a member of the Revolutionary generation. During the war, he witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, served (like Hamilton) as an aide-de-camp to Commander-in-Chief General George Washington, and deputy adjutant-general to General Horatio Gates, giving him the credibility and connections to create his history paintings.
But unlike the majority of young American officers, Trumbull resigned his commission early in the war, and instead of returning home to Connecticut, he made his first of several trips to Europe to pursue his artistic career. His first voyage to London in 1780 to study with another American artist Benjamin West became a political nightmare for the twenty-four-year-old Trumbull. Great Britain was in an uproar over the American capture, trial, and execution of British agent Major John André. Because Trumbull had served Washington, he arrested in retaliation on inflated charges and threatened with execution. Only the intervention of West, a favorite artist of King George III, rescued Trumbull from imprisonment and possible death.
Another trip to London in 1786 led to an introduction to Thomas Jefferson, the American minister to France. Jefferson invited Trumbull to be his guest in Paris. The invitation also led Trumbull into the most entertaining portion of his life. As Jefferson’s artistic protege, Trumbull was introduced to the highest levels of French society, and with him visited the best galleries, shops, salons, and theaters that Paris had to offer on the eve of their own revolution. (Among those he met in Paris was Angelica Schuyler Church, sister to Eliza Schuyler Hamilton and sister-in-law to Alexander Hamilton.) He in turn introduced Jefferson to Italian artist Maria Cosway and her English husband, also an artist, Richard Cosway.
They became an unusual foursome, traveling across Europe ostensibly to admire and acquire art while Jefferson relentlessly pursued the flirtatious Mrs. Cosway. It must have been an uncomfortable situation for Trumbull, and even after their return to Paris, Jefferson continued to employ Trumbull as a romantic go-between, carrying letters to Mrs. Cosway. By the end of 1787, however, the relationship between Jefferson and Mrs. Cosway had begun to cool, and Trumbull returned to London to paint, doubtless with something of a sigh of relief.
But for Trumbull, the connections he made with other artists in Paris had been invaluable and inspiring. He was particularly impressed with the talented French women artists like Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and their pupils in their studios. Trumbull’s ostensible goal while in Paris was to complete portrait sketches of surviving French officers who had served at the siege of Yorktown for his painting-in-progress, The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis.
Yet his time wasn’t entirely devoted to drawing aging French officers. One of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s most talented students was Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond. Around eighteen at the time, Mlle Carreaux de Rosemond was also regarded as a stylish beauty, as the portrait by Mme Labille-Guiard, above, proves. Dressed in blue velvet, white silk, and lace, her hair extravagantly poufed and dressed, and oversized faux pearl earrings brushing her shoulders, she definitely possessed the Parisian je ne sais quoi that wasn’t to be found back home in Trumbull’s Federalist Connecticut. She must have caught his eye, for on one of his visits to Mme Labille-Guiard’s studio, he made the lovely sketch, right, of Mlle Carreaux de Rosemond on the corner of larger drawing.
The impromptu portrait was never included in any of Trumbull's history paintings, nor was that likely his intention. Even as a fiction writer, I won’t try and imagine any romantic story here, either; Mlle Carreaux de Rosemond married engraver Charles Clément Balvay in 1788, and sadly died the same year. Instead Trumbull’s sketch of a beautiful young woman probably became a souvenir of his time in Paris, inspiring and unforgettable.
Above: Marie-Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond by Adelaide Labille-Guiard, c1785, private collection
Left: Detail, Madonna and Child with Saints Joseph and John by John Trumbull, 1786, Fordham University.
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