Trumbull, John (1756–1843)

US artist. He worked in England and the USA, and is now remembered for his series of historical paintings of war scenes from the American Revolution. The most famous is his depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence 1776.

Born in Lebanon, Connecticut, the son of Governor Jonathan Trumbull, he was educated at Harvard University and saw action during the American Revolution. His first paintings were in the style of John Copley. In 1780 he travelled to England to study art with Benjamin West and was briefly imprisoned for espionage, returning to the USA 1789. From 1793 to 1804 he undertook diplomatic assignments in England. He later served as president of the American Academy of Fine Arts 1817–36, and in 1817 he was commissioned by Congress to paint four revolutionary themes for the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington.

One of his best-known works, painted in West's studio in London, is The Death of General Warren at Bunker Hill 1786 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven).

Trumbull, John (1750–1831)

US poet and lawyer. Although he published a number of satirical essays and poems, he is known today solely for one work, M'Fingle (1775–82), a burlesque epic poem satirizing the pro-British Tories in America. He was associated with the ‘Hartford (or Connecticut) Wits’, an informal group, Federalist in their politics but promoting a new American spirit in their writing.

Trumbull was born in Watertown, Connecticut, and was the second cousin of merchant and governor Jonathan Trumbull. Extremely precocious as a child, he studied at Yale (BA 1767; MA 1770) and taught there (1771–73). He then studied law with John Adams (1773), practised law in New Haven and Hartford (1774–1825), and was a judge of the Connecticut state courts (1801–19).