Conservative journalist Richard Brookhiser, author of, inter alia, well-wrought biographies of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris and a perceptive account of “America’s First Dynasty,” the Adamses of Massachusetts, has now taken on a different kind of subject: the life of Revolutionary America’s most famous painter, John Trumbull. Though not the first book on its subject, the first book with more or less its title, or the first book with the same image on its dustjacket, Glorious Lessons: John Trumbull, Painter of the American Revolution does what we are now accustomed to having Brookhiser’s books do: it offers us a learned account of its subject full of strikingly insightful observations about, and penetrating evaluations of, one thoughtful patriot by another.

John Trumbull was the son of one Governor of Connecticut Jonathan Trumbull and brother of another Connecticut governor of the same name. As David D. Hall showed in Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England, it had been common in the region to give plural children, even more than two children, exactly the same name, so we needn’t deduce that John’s parents were particularly fond of the Fourth Gospel. Trumbull-père led his colony into the Revolution, and his son John participated in it as a soldier. In that capacity, the younger man came to know General George Washington and witnessed considerable Patriot and Redcoat bloodshed. Through the rest of his days, he would admire the newly republican states’ wartime leader and, like many veterans, wish to memorialize his comrades’ sacrifice.

From an earlier point, John was inclined to art. He would, if allowed, have gone at the age of fifteen to study under John Singleton Copley, who was then making a name for himself as a Boston painter. The expense would have approximated that of going to Harvard. “This argument,” Brookhiser quotes John, “seemed to me not bad,” but the governor preferred his son go directly to Harvard. The two of them disagreed repeatedly about this question. Ultimately, the governor told John he should undertake the study of law, to which (quite understandably, I say) John was not attracted at all. Practicality is not everything.

James Madison Jr. came to a similar conclusion regarding the study of the law (on which he had embarked) early in his life, but being the oldest of James Madison, Sr.’s children was a different matter from being Governor Trumbull’s sixth and final child: the former was destined to be independently wealthy, while the latter—not so much. Though never exactly in straitened circumstances, John Trumbull never achieved financial security.

Finding New England short of opportunity for instruction in painting, Trumbull crossed the sea to study in Britain—in wartime, despite the fact that he was the son of a Patriot governor of Connecticut. Fortunately, he came under the tutelage of Benjamin West, a Philadelphia native so successful in England as to have gained the patronage of King George III himself. Lord George Germain, the secretary of state, vowed that if John “chose to visit London for the purpose of studying the fine arts,” he “might rely upon being unmolested.” His way was likely smoothed by the letter of introduction he carried from Benjamin Franklin.

One of this book’s particular merits is that although priced at just $30, it is profusely illustrated—not only with sixteen plates, including images of all nine of Trumbull’s major works, in the middle of the book, but also with ten black-and-white figures at appropriate places in the text. The reader sees leading works of painters, British and American, into whose orbit Trumbull fell while in Britain, and Brookhiser does a nice job of explaining how these and other relationships benefited the aspirant painter—then and ever after. Not only did John Trumbull make good use of their help, but at several points they gave him gratuitous assistance in making his way in the painting profession. Readers who have seen Benjamin West’s The Death of General Wolfe, for example, will be able to tell how powerfully it influenced Trumbull in painting The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775, and The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775. Brookhiser does a fine job throughout the book not only in evaluating the artworks central to his story but in making clear where they stood in the tradition of which Trumbull is part and how Trumbull’s artistic powers waxed and waned across the arc of his life.

Besides prominent painters and other British contacts, Trumbull also made the acquaintance in London of the other man destined to become a great painter of the American Revolution, Rhode Island native Gilbert Stuart. As Brookhiser describes their earliest acquaintance, “The merchant/governor’s son and the scapegrace became friends.”

One might have wondered how a rebel governor’s son could have moved comfortably among prominent Britons during the American Revolution, and the answer would have been—temporarily. His arrest on suspicion of spying came in November 1780. Under interrogation, he pointed out that he was the son of the governor of Connecticut and a former aide to George Washington, adding, “Treat me as you please, always remembering, that as I may be treated, so will your friends in America,” and soon enough his captors’ rigor slackened. King George III promised West that in case John were sentenced to capital punishment, a royal pardon would spare him, and both Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke, the opposition leader and his mentor, visited the American in prison. When at last Trumbull was offered bail, he, West, and Copley paid it. Early in 1782, he was home at last.

When the war ended the following year, Trumbull returned to England. Meeting Burke again, he was advised, “You belong to a young nation, which will soon want public buildings; these must be erected before the decorations of painting and sculpture will be required.” Therefore, he ought to pursue architecture as well as painting. Trumbull never followed that path, however. Instead, he conceived of a new project. As he wrote to Jonathan, Jr., “the late war opens a new and noble field for painting.”

Trumbull’s father wrote one last time in April 1785 insisting that he come home, but at the time of the older man’s death in August, the painter remained in England. The governor thus did not survive to hear of Goethe’s praise of John’s The Death of General Warren. Even more impressed was Abigail Adams, a close friend of Warren who had taken her son John Quincy Adams to a Quincy eminence to watch the smoke rise from the distant battle; she said of the Bunker Hill painting that, “Mr. Trumbull has made a painting of … the death of General Warren. To speak of its merit I can only say that in looking at it my whole frame contracted, my blood shivered, and I felt faintness at my heart.” Sir Joshua Reynolds expressed his admiration of the painting too.

On West’s advice that while a painting might fetch a nice sum, selling engravings of a popular painting was where the money was, John set off for Paris. He there met Jacques-Louis David, the greatest French painter of the age, and Thomas Jefferson, the American minister to France. Having learned biting criticism from the English, Trumbull wrote on seeing David’s Oath of the Horatii, “story well told, drawing pretty good, coloring cold.” He stayed with Jefferson, who was so impressed with him that he offered to make Trumbull his secretary, but Trumbull declined. While in Paris, Trumbull introduced Jefferson to fellow painters Richard and Maria Cosway, and along the way, he told Jefferson about the grand project he envisioned:

The greatest motive I had for engaging in, or for continuing, the pursuit of painting has been my wish of commemorating the great events of our country’s revolution. … To preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man; to give to the present and future sons of misfortune, such glorious lessons of their rights, and of the spirit with which they should assert and support them, and even to transmit to their descendants, the personal resemblance of those who have been the great actors in those illustrious scenes, were objects which gave a dignity to [my] profession.

Jefferson encouraged him in his project, adding that he really ought to include in it an image of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—in which, coincidentally, the minister would likely have a prominent place. In time, this led the younger man to paint the image that graces the $2 bill. In October 1789, young Trumbull sailed from Gravesend, England, where Pocahontas is interred, for North America.

Fortunately for the young artist, the leading American survivors of the Revolution proved willing to sit for his paintings. Most important of them was General Washington, who warmed to the task. Where he did not have living people to pose for him, Trumbull substituted his subjects’ relatives when feasible. Fortune failed him in his attempts to secure backing for a panorama of Niagara Falls. On the basis of rumor, he thought Benjamin West had talked potential patrons out of funding that project. Brookhiser considers this idea “dubious,” as West had generally been highly supportive of his student’s work. True or not, the younger man’s suspicion led to a break in the West-Trumbull relationship.

Back in the United States, the conclusion to the War of 1812 seemed to offer an entrepreneurial artist an opportunity: when the US Capitol was rebuilt, it would need interior decoration. To former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, he wrote requesting endorsement of his plan. The former offered only emotional support, but Jefferson—whose party controlled the Executive and Congress—might do more. To Virginia US senator James Barbour, Jefferson wrote of his own high opinion of Trumbull and that “on the continent of Europe, when I was there, he was considered as superior to West”! We do not know whether Senator Barbour had yet chosen Jefferson as his Barboursville mansion’s architect, but Jefferson’s Virginia Capitol, his Monticello home, and other works had already given his opinion about art particular weight. For whatever reason, Congress commissioned four paintings for the rebuilt Capitol from Trumbull. Their subjects would be the Declaration, the Battle of Saratoga, the surrender at Yorktown, and General Washington’s resignation to Congress. President James Madison approved.

All of the first five presidents appear in Trumbull’s paintings—even though Madison had not actually been present for General Washington’s retirement. By now, Trumbull knew politics. This helps account for the fact that Yale College, not the family alma mater Harvard, ended up as the recipient of several of his chief works. When at last they were installed, Trumbull supposedly stood back, took in the sight, and observed, “These are my children.”

Brookhiser clearly describes the various family problems that led Trumbull at last to make that observation. Trumbull had decided to prioritize his work. Partly due to his own decisions, partly due to chance, and partly because of other people’s behavior, he had rather a rough family life after reaching adulthood. Hemingway famously has a narrator say, “To understand is to forgive,” but then he corrects himself. Readers of this book are apt to sympathize with Trumbull, but they will also see that he was a difficult man.

Chapters twelve and thirteen include incisive descriptions and evaluations of Trumbull’s chief work: his eight paintings on the Revolution. These are informed by Brookhiser’s understanding of political science, art history, American politics, the American Revolution, and Trumbull. Chapter fourteen explains what story the group of paintings at Yale tells together. By the book’s end, the reader—even if he is already familiar with the great story Trumbull is telling—will be moved by, and impressed with, Trumbull’s achievement. Conceiving of an utterly momentous topic and envisioning illustrations of its most important manifestations, John Trumbull recorded it in a monumental way. The artist and his subject deserve our admiration, and Richard Brookhiser, in doing right by the artist, has reminded us how grateful, impressed, and faithful we ought to be.