eginning of this chapter, and you will
see a witty and kindly old gentleman, as well as an irascible one.

John Trumbull was a student of West's at the same time that Stuart was.
He was a year younger, and was a son of that Jonathan Trumbull,
afterwards governor of Connecticut, whose title of Brother Jonathan,
given him by Washington, became afterwards a sort of national nickname.
He was an infant prodigy, graduating from Harvard at an age when most
boys were entering, and afterwards going to Boston to take lessons from
Copley. The outbreak of the Revolution stopped his studies; he enlisted
in the army, won rapid promotion, and finally resigned in a huff because
he thought his commission as colonel incorrectly dated.

In 1780, he sailed for France, on his way to London, met Benjamin
Franklin in Paris and from him secured a letter of introduction to
Benjamin West, who welcomed him with his unfailing cordiality; but he
had scarcely commenced his studies when he was arrested and thrown into
prison. The reason was the arrest and execution at New York of Major
Andre, who was captured with Benedict Arnold's treasonable
correspondence hidden in his boot, and who was hanged as a spy. Knowing
that Trumbull had been an officer in the American army, and anxious to
avenge Andre's death, the King ordered his arrest, but West interceded
for him and secured his release several weeks later.

Warned that England was unsafe for him, Trumbull returned to America and
remained there until after the close of the Revolution. The beginning of
1784 saw him again in London, at work on his two famous paintings, "The
Battle of Bunker Hill" and "The Death of General Montgomery," and from
that time until his death he was occupied almost exclusively with the
painting of pictures illustrating events in American history--"The
Surrender of Cornwallis," "The Battle of Princeton," "The Capture of the
Hessians at Trenton," to mention only three. In 1816 he received a
commission to paint four of the eight commemorative pictures in the
Capitol at Washington, and completed the last one eight years later,
this being his last important work.

Trumbull is in no respect to be compared with Gilbert Stuart, but his
work was done with a painstaking accuracy which makes it valuable as a
historical document. For the personages of his pictures he painted a
great number of miniatures from life, which, in many cases, are the only
surviving presentments of some of the