We next turn to John Trumbull, the third and last of our “Patriot Painters. Trumbull became America’s first great history painter.
Category: Points North
The Patriot Painters, Part 2: Gilbert Stuart, 1755-1828
Gilbert Stuart, Self Portrait In the case of Gilbert Stuart, the second of our painters, we are dealing with a more talented artist, one of the greatest portrait painters of all time, but a much less intellectually-engaged or public-spirited figure than Charles Willson Paine. Like Peale, Stuart grew up in relative poverty. His father, Gilbert …
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The Patriot Painters: Peale, Stuart, Trumbull and Early American Art, Part 1: Charles Willson Peale, 1741-1827
The three artists of the Revolutionary Era and Early National Period’s that I call The Patriot Painters--- Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull, created works that became American icons.
The Name Allston: An Appropriate Choice?
Boston’s Allston section is said to be the only community in the United States named for an artist---the great Romantic painter Washington Allston (1779-1843). This is of course is no small distinction. Allston “Self-Portrait, completed in 1805. By the 1820s this European trained painter was regarded as the greatest artist America had yet produced, having …
John Singleton Copley’s Dilemma: Why America’s Leading Painter Fled Boston in 1774
Born in 1738, the son of recently-arrived Irish Protestant immigrants, John Singleton Copley was raised in cramped quarters over the family’s tobacco shop on Boston’ Long Wharf.
Annexation Embraced: Brighton’s 1873 Acceptance of Boston
On October 7, 1873 the voters of the independent towns of Brookline and Brighton made sharply contrasting decisions on the question of annexation to the City of Boston. While two-thirds of Brookline’s electors rejected merger with the metropolis, fully 81 percent of Brighton’s electors eagerly embraced the opportunity to join the city. Why did …
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Annexation Spurned: Brookline’s 1873 Rejection of Boston
On October 7, 1873 the neighboring towns of Brookline, Brighton, and West Roxbury faced a momentous decision---whether to continue to be self-governing entities, or to relinquish their political independence to the City of Boston.
Upcoming Post’s: Annexation Spurned: Brookline’s 1873 Rejection of Boston & Annexation Embraced: Brighton’s 1873 Acceptance of Boston
On October 7, 1873 the voters of the independent towns of Brookline and Brighton made sharply contrasting decisions on the question of annexation to the City of Boston. While two-thirds of Brookline’s electors rejected merger with the metropolis, fully 81 percent of Brighton’s electors eagerly embraced the opportunity to join the city. Why did these …
Abolition Scorned: Boston’s Response to Antislavery
The radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison Modern Bostonians take pride in the Hub’s association with the anti-slavery crusade. It was here, we are fond of reminding outsiders, that the militantly antislavery newspaper the Liberator was founded in 1831 by radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and that the most resolutely abolitionist organization in the United …
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John Eliot and Nonantum
Reverend John Eliot, the so-called “Apostle to the Indians” In the 1646 to 1674 period, the Reverend John Eliot of Roxbury, the so-called Apostle to the Indians, converted some 1100 Massachusetts natives to the Christian religion and played a central role in establishing fourteen “Praying Indian” communities in the eastern part of Massachusetts. Though not …