fellowships and a two-time senior fellow at the met. he has spoken internationally on the intersection of american art and history. with that i would like to welcome paul to the lectern. [applause] paul: thank you very much. it is a pleasure to be here. good evening to you. i want to thank my hosts at the tavern and my publisher who is represented here by sarah -- tara kennedy for publishing , this book. "of arms and artists," this is the book here. it is a hybrid book in the sense that it attempts to do a number of things at the same time. it is meant to be read by anybody. anyone who's interested in 18th century america. the founding, the revolution. i think you will find many things in here that will be a revelation to you. this is an aspect of that era not previously treated. at the same time, i had been intending to appeal to professional historians. they might learn a few things. certainly my colleagues might learn a lot from the book. this is my effort to execute a triple steal. the world series was on last night. i may discover i am out on all three bases. but i would be happy with a double-steal or single-steal. the last successful triple-steal was by the cleveland indians. 2008. [laughter] this is a book about five artists. but equally, it is a book about george washington, thomas jefferson, and john adams. john adams and john wilson singleton copley, the two families became the best of friends. john trumbull lived with thomas jefferson in paris at the american embassy in paris. trumbull was privy to the most intimate aspects of thomas jefferson's life. for actually a while he became a go-between in jefferson's wild romantic pursuit of maria causeway, a married artist to who was in paris at the time. trumbull delivered letters between them showing tremendous discretion. their lives were utterly wrapped up in the events of the revolution. charles willson peale fought. he was in a militia company from philadelphia on the banks of the delaware with washington with his musket and his painting kit. john trumbull was the son of the governor of connecticut and he watched from a distance the firebombing and burning of charlestown at the battle of bunker hill. he became washington's aide-de-camp. he was friends with all of these people. so, it is all of those stories woven together within the book. that was the fun of writing it. what is the book about you are wondering? i am going to mention for -- 4 principles or 3 building blocks of this book. if you read the book, if you go through the book from front to back, you will never hear me say , "here is building block number two." it is all buried in there. but this was all on my mind when i was researching and writing the book. the first thing is obvious, which was that i proposed that works of art were essential to the founding of the united states. that is actually quite a bold statement, but i will explain why i think they are utterly important. that is a big one. i will give you a couple examples. for starters, i take you to independence hall, which was known then as the state house. it did not become known as independence hall until later. the commonwealth of pennsylvania commissioned the artist charles willson peale to paint a picture for independence hall for the state of pennsylvania in 1779 and here, in fact, is his picture, which is an eight-foot-tall painting. a big, impressive painting that shows george washington after the battle of princeton, which was fought early in 1777 not long after -- a few days after -- the passage of the delaware river. the crossing of the delaware. this is what the state of pennsylvania -- what was the commission for the work of art. i am in a bad position here to read it but i have a copy of it here. paul: there are a couple things about that that are quite remarkable. that the freest, wisest, bravest, like the freshly minted united states wishes to follow in the footsteps of all great nations before it. feels an obligation to commemorate and have portraits painted of important individuals such as washington. so that is rather remarkable. the second thing about it that is important is the contemplation of the picture may excite others to tread in the same glorious steps. that is, it will inspire emulation. just one look. just seeing what washington, a man of wealth and standing, was willing to do, to sacrifice, to do whatever was necessary. that this will inspire others to join the war efforts. when this picture was painted, the war was on. so maybe it will stimulate others to follow as well. so works of art as inspiring, as motivational. so it was an important picture in that regard. forward two years. painted in 1779, let's forward to september 9, 1781. the british are losing at yorktown. there is no future, there is no hope for the british. surrender is imminent and everybody understands the surrender at yorktown is essentially the end of the war and everybody knows this. they know this in london perfectly well, too. on september 9, a group of loyalists broke into independence hall and slashed charles wilson peale's picture with a knife. they shredded the head, and the face. that is, it had so much symbolic importance as to inspire defacement of an official image. maybe they were not going to be able to kill washington himself, but they could at least wipe that smile off of his face. they could at least slash the values represented in the picture. they could turn something like this, something attractive like this, into something repulsive. so, works of art were that incendiary at the time. and this had happened before. in 1769, this would be during some of the protests before the revolution of the stamp act, some radical activists went into a building in cambridge and walked up to john singleton copley's portrait of the british governor of massachusetts and they cut the heart area out of the portrait. leaving a hole. copley was stunned by this. he was being called upon to repair it and boston newspapers at the time said, as great an artist is copley might be, it would be impossible for him to restore the heart to the heartless governor bernard. again, destroying a work of art as a political statement. the most famous one, which is, what, a stone's throw away from here? 1776, washington is marching through here heading uptown and the british have invaded and his soldiers are the -- are demoralized and camped near about where city hall is today and washington is delivered a copy of the declaration of independence and and he has it read to the troops. at that moment, they spontaneously -- not by order but spontaneously -- i'm down here to bowling green and last ropes around a huge equestrian statue of george iii. they dragged it to the ground. they drag it through the streets. then, they melt down the lead. it was lead covered in gold. they melt down the lead to make musket balls to kill the british. so again, a work of art, that's what it was, a work of art and the political statements that were made around it. works of art mattered. they are statements of political belief at a time when statements needed to be made and when statements were made. let's go back to the painting. there was another painting originally intended to hang in the state house in independence hall before the revolution began. it never quite made it there but if you went to any of the colonial capitals of america you would find one of the endless numbers of copies of this portrait hanging in all of the colonial capitals. and what you would see, what was intended for independence hall is the picture you see on the right, which is the coronation portrait of king george iii that was what was intended for independence hall. when you are looking at on the left is what actually was there. you see the similarities between the two, right? the kind of pose. weighed heavily on one leg off of the other. the lightweight leg is doing different things, which tosses the body is to one side. the body is buttressed by the left arm which is resting on the on theof a canon or table. the right arm is up on the hip, cocking the elbow outward in a pose that would be called "akimbo." they are remarkably similar. why is that? because peale studied art before the war in london. you would have seen that he would have seen -- he would have seen, not this one specifically, but the artist alan ramsey made these -- he and his studio were making these all the time. that is the point of similarity. yet i would say that peale has transformed it into a revolutionary portrait because washington -- i would say that peale has transformed it. you don't ever look george the third in the eye. he can be looked at but he does not make eye contact. george washington is eye to eye, face-to-face. he is approachable, understated. i like to use the word benevolent. a little awkward. very direct. confident, calm after a brutal battle. the fields were covered with ice. many injured. many killed. there were stories about how the blood froze on the ice. you do not see that in this picture. i will come back to the reasons in just a moment. peale painted this picture with the first great portrait in -- ruling to this picture. the first great portrait in america. this one. the values and principles of the new american republic. washington versus george iii. the difference between the the two-man, between united states and britain. difference between a republic and monarchy. the difference between today and yesterday. so there it all is in a quick look. anybody looking at this and 7079 -- in or afterwards would 1779 immediately grasp the import of it all. that's the revolutionary aspect of that particular painting. the second building block. the united states desperately needed pictures, images, things like this. not just by charles willson peale but by all of these artists. this was a complicated moment during the revolution and after the revolution. transformative, compelling, captivating, confusing, frightening, utterly incomprehensible. not being able to understand what is happening while it is happening or what it is going to lead to. it is inchoate. but certain things are clear. british rule was over. british kings, british governors, british history instantly offensive and completely obsolete. so, goodbye to all of that. now what was required were of american images, american rituals, american heroes, american history, even though the history is you know, 15 minutes long. [laughter] paul: and especially in a new country that is not united, fractured. local identities. new yorkers thought of themselves first and foremost as new yorkers not as citizens of the united states, whatever that was. same thing with south carolinians, georgians, you name it. their identities are local. now they are being asked to become citizens of a greater entity and how were they persuaded by that. how were they persuaded of a new national identity for themselves? this is a task i think that would -- would i tell my students -- a sort of microwave nation. microwave like, you pop it in, you press a few buttons and hit independents, warfare, constitution, and you pop it out and here it is. but what is it exactly? how do people come to understand this question mark how did they find common ground of amongst themselves across 1000 miles of atlantic coast? this is where the artists come in. charles willson peale paints somewhere between 17 and 24 of these full-like portraits of washington. -- full-length portraits of washington. they appear in state capitals now. one of them is sent to thomas jefferson in paris to hang in the american embassy. another copy is sent to king louis the 16th and france. -- in france. the french are writing the checks for the american revolution. they sent soldiers, they sent the navy, they are writing checks. and imagine this picture showing up in front of louis the 16th as if to say, things are going very well as you can see here. we're confident, calm, not a problem. more checks. [laughter] paul: gilbert stuart paints washington over there on the right more than 100 times over the course of 30 years. and pictures, other artists copy his pictures. it goes on in and on. they appear everywhere. in other words, these works of art become objects of national shape. be leave in them. believe in the people you see in them. in this case, washington who is the glue of the nation. in order to understand that in south carolina, in order to understand that in new hampshire, you have to see something. something has to occur. you will not see them in person. the building block of the book third of art and artists is that i am thinking that these works of art were and are, still arc -- still are to america, what the iliad and the any edit word -- aeneid in the did were to the ancient greeks and romans. that is, in this building especially, check out the gallery the next room, letter-day versions of the same things. foundational story of the united states told over and over again. full of heroes. they are seen over and over again. the difference being that you can never be sure in reading mythology or homer or hearing about scandinavian mythology, whether any of it was remotely true or any of the characters ever actually existed. and in the united states, they did. they were flesh and blood. the events occurred. there were accounts about it all. there was something palpable about the foundational stories we experienced back then and we still rely upon today. so if i were asking folks to conjure up an image, go ahead. what did it look like in independence hall in the summer of 1776? most likely you would conjure up john trumbull's painting of the declaration of independence which you see here on the screen. this is the version of it that is at yale, the university art ellery. there is a colossal version of -- gallery. there is a colossal version of it in the rotunda of the united states capitol. there it is. or if i said that battle of , bunker hill and the summer of 1775, what did that look like? well here's john trumbull's painting of bunker hill that he painted 10 years after the event. that gets us about as close to it as we can possibly get. then if we want to think about what washington look like when he was president, well, or what it looked like when washington -- this is washington's resignation in the and apple -- indianapolis state house in 1783 or what washington looked like when he was president of the united states, we might want to rely on gilbert stuart's portrait of washington taken from life when he was president of the united states. great. so they sort of directly connect this back to the nation's origin and that has been their power ever since. they have set the stage for the american republic for 240 years. another example. you were in the u.s. capitol building and this is the rotunda and you are under the great dome of the rotunda of the capital and you are looking at -- this is june 2004. the casket bearing the body of president ronald reagan has been carried from california to washington, d.c., and there has been a procession up pennsylvania avenue and at the bottom of the steps of the capital, the casket is picked up by military honor guard. the casket is carried up the steps of the capitol. a military band is playing the battle hymn of the republic. the casket is carried inside the dome. you cannot see it here, it is just under that her weight bear. -- under that doorway there. it is brought into the dome of the capital and it is placed on the temple that once held abraham lincoln's body. and behind, john trumbull's for -- 4 pictures of the revolution set the stage for this. they connect 2004 back to the origins of the nation. the symbolism was intense. it was meant to be intense. who are these people? this is the entire united states congress. so, there it is. the summation of everything and -- in one place. this is not a church. but it is kind of a church. this is where the sacred images, the sacred moments of the past are laid out. if you go into a catholic church, you will find stations of the cross, we find stations of the revolution. something like that that. the declaration of independence, surrender at saratoga, surrender at yorktown, washington's resignation. there it is. i could go on but i will just say one more thing. i am going to take you to the north carolina house of representatives. this is the chamber that served for the house until there got to be too many representatives said they had to build something else but this is the chamber that existed through most of the 19th century and into the early 20th century and you see the desks of the congressman here. the center aisle. you see the speakers. you know, i really want to save -- say pulpit. podium. and behind it, the altarpiece. which is a copy of gilbert stuart's presidential washington. the analogy to a churches powerful and that is deliberate. it is kind of a sacred moment. you walk into this room and to understand the responsibility that you must live up to. stewart's washington, the full-length ones, one of the full-length ones, was hung in the white house in the 1800s and every president since john adams has had to be president under the withering gaze of stewart's washington. and there is another one in there, too. sometimes it is in the oval office. next time you're looking through the news, surely you are going to see images like this one. [laughter] paul: it is quite literally, i am watching. i am evaluating. our you living up to the -- are you living up to the responsibility at hand? so, it stands there without -- with that force. in american political culture. this one, it's not a clear slide, but it's the standing washington it looks like he is giving -- showing george bush the door. [laughter] paul: so these works of art told they embody, the , principles. we do not have to go read the constitutional the time. we can look at these and they serve that. and they continue to serve that sort of function. ok, the fourth point in "of arms and artists," proceed with caution. it would be a mistake to insist these images be documentary-proof or documentary objects that tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. it would be a mistake to think this is exactly the way it happened or two subjected to or to subject it to that kind of standard. these are works of art make no mistake about it. with all of 18th-century artistic convention built into them. that is to say, -- it also -- use the fact. i'm sorry. i'm getting ahead of myself. it also sappears on the one dollar bill from 1869. i am backtracking now. exactly how many one dollar bills have you printed i asked the treasury department since 1869? they don't really know. maybe i could have found out but hundreds of trillions, making it by far the most reproduced image in history. by a long shot. my guess is that if you are carrying around some gilbert stuart washington's right now, in your purse, maybe for the men, you've got it right there in your back pocket. you are sitting on it. kind of it and intimate relationship you have going on with washington and gilbert stuart. every time you buy something, you weren't thinking about it but there it is. standard. right? so, right. proceed with caution. that is to say, research the facts as much as possible as john trumbull did with the battle of monk or hill. -- bunker hill. very hard to get the portraits as close as he could get them but when it came down to it, he could not depict events as they actually occurred. here you see general joseph warren who has been wounded on the battlefield. boston is out there and the harbor and these are the flames of charlestown as it is burning. there are british ships in the harbor and this is a massive british bayonet charge that finally ended the battle. the bayonet charge of being the most brutal thing imaginable. the americans are in retreat. warren is dying and a militiaman is holding his body and he laced -- reaches out with his left hand as a british grenadier is about to deliver the coup de grace to warn. -- to warren. but the american pushes it off. more or less saying, let this man die honorably. he should not die that way. not only is that happening but a british major, major small you see here, steps over one of his own dead soldiers so he can reach out with his right hand and grabbed the musket barrel because he too, believes warren should die honorably. isn't that something? this is a picture of brutality and mercy at the same time. it is a call for mercy. it did not happen that way. yeah, a lot of it happened but the fact of it was that warren came on the battlefield late. as soon as he came on the battlefield, he was in on the back of the head with a musket ball. -- he was hit with a musket ball in the back of his head. his brain exploded. his body was abandoned, the british threw it into an open grave. that is what happened. but by 18th-century artistic rules this picture must be made , into something inspirational, epic, monumental, inspiring. showing warren destroyed is not going to do it. he has some of the facts but he has idealized the picture of according to the artistic rules that existed in that century and centuries before it as well. the same is also true of the declaration of independence which is the closest any artist -- it was started in 1880 61 -- in 1886 when trumbull was living with jefferson in paris. trumbull had no plans for painting this subject but jefferson, whispering in one ear, said, it would be a great idea if you would paint the declaration of independence and maybe show me handing the document on the table there. and that's what trumbull paints. he has jefferson as his informant. jefferson draws a picture, it a floor plan of the room. but jefferson is already forgetting or scrambling, what does it look like in their exactly? what happened that day? this is june 20 8, 1776. jefferson does not exactly remember that day. already this is not accurate. try as he might. here you see the committee of five, including adams, jefferson, franklin, turning in the document to john hancock. it never happened quite that way. the document was on the desk but you don't get up and turn it in, use it down like everybody else -- you it down like everybody else and then when the time comes it is read out loud. it must've taken about 12-14 minutes to read the declaration of a defense out loud and then they say, next order of business to see whether they would be willing to raise enough money to buy some more nails. they needed nails. can we buy some more nails? or maybe improve the chesapeake. it had its moments, but this looks like the grand moment. and everybody in the room at that time, they are all talking to each other, bickering, you cannot get order in here at all. in trumbull's painting they'll , politely sit in rows of deserving the great event of the sacred document. nobody thought of it as a sacred document in june 1776. but now it is being made into this. the analogy here is when you get a group of wise men attending a sacred birth, what we are usually talking about is the adoration of the magi, the birth of christ, those sorts of things. and trumbull knows that perfectly well and he has adapted that here and it is the birth of the united states and these are the wise men and these are those who sit silently in the attendance. it's a bit like a crash -- c reche. the portraits, he worked hard over years and years and years to get the portraits right that he does not want to -- he wants this to be an epic painting and so he takes artistic license to make it so. this is true of john gilbert stuart's great portraits of george washington as well. we ask our students, what do you think of him? the first thing they say is, well, he is boring will stop -- he is boring. remote. stoic. drab. a man of gravitas. that does not describe george washington. really, he is a man of tremendous energy. a man of ego. when stewart met washington and philadelphia, he was blown away by his physical presence and his personality. he was overwhelming. he wrote to a friend, he said, this man, washington, if he had been an indian he would be the fiercest man of all the tribes. this is the ferocity of washington. on another occasion he goes to paint washington in and i am not sure if he is walking into independence hall or robert morris's house exactly but he opens the house and -- door and interrupt something and he sees george washington never, george washington grabbing a man and his administration by the lapels and throwing him across the room. that is the washington that john gilbert stuart new but not the one you see here. he looks like george washington, that is true, but this is the one for posterity. the timeless washington. the sculptor washington. -- the sculpture of washington. this is a plausible but idealized washington where he is being presented as the president. simple, plain, and a black suit. in a simple pose surrounded by rather gaudy items. drapery and so on. but he looks almost like a new england minister who has accidentally strayed into the court of louis the xvi. that is the look. that was the idea. this opened up a huge debate. i should read a little something from the book here about what these pictures ought to be. let me go back for a second. when trumbull wanted to get the federal government to pay him to paint those pictures in the rotunda, he began a public relations campaign. in this campaign he writes letters to congressmen and senators. he swallows his pride and talks to president james madison, who he really dislikes. he writes letters to his old pals. old john adams and old thomas jefferson, asking for their endorsement of this project. would you be so kind as to write letters to the president and the congress to endorse mike -- my pictures that i would be hired to do? and both adams and jefferson right back. adams is 81 years old and adams opened his reply to trouble with -- to trumbull with expressions of pleasure at hearing from him, who he had not seen since he 79 deposit when they had crossed -- since the when they had 1790's crossed paths in new york's and philadelphia and then the offered cordial affirmations and best wishes with the project. after dispensing with the niceties, adams launched a frontal attack on trumbull's paintings and all forms of state art past, present, and future. you will please to remember, he lectured the artist, that the burn and the pencil, the chisel and the trowel of which we have any information on the side of despotism and superstition. for centuries, artists and sculptors painting portraits have conspired against the rights of mankind. in adams is moral universe, art was the supreme instrument of sophistry. he warned troubled the great -- trumbull the great artist of independence, he too was on the threshold of becoming an enemy of human rights. adams felt obliged to tell troubled that in his words, i am therefore more inclined to despair than to hope for your success in congress. adams hungered for pictures that were as he put it, honorable and noble. he worried about whether trumbull understood the moral gravity of a project in his words "destined to tell posterity of the events of the revolution." the problems as adams thought was that all art by its very nature tells and imperfect story and however strenuously denied as my research is subject, the result is always semi-fiction. a storybook version. a nostalgic glance backward or worse, a building block in an ideological agenda. as adams knew well history is , never amenable to documentary painting. councils and characters and actions he advised trumbull, , history is always neglected and forgotten. nuance is lost. truth lies banquet. art distorts. truth lies a vanquished. the american republic, the burden on all artists to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth was magnified. the colossal scale of troubles -- trumbull's pictures and future placement in the capitol rotunda multiply further the artist's responsibility. adams wrote to trumbull the , historical justice should fall prey to deal more of the fable. that would be a catastrophe. adams had lived long enough to see his work nightmare scenario -- his worst nightmare scenario emerge as the national reality. he predicted late in life that the story of the revolution would become in his words, one continued life from one end to -- one continued lie from one end to another. the essence of the whole would be dr. franklin's electrical rod smote the earth and out sprang george washington. that franklin electrified him with his rod and then these two conducted all the policy, negotiation, legislation, and war. what is behind this of course is that history is neglecting me. you know, john adams. what about me? part of this is his ego. but the idea of electrifying and all that, in a number of places he makes reference to michelangelo's sistine chapel ceiling. an old and grieving john adams went to see this picture in samuel hall in 1818, 5 weeks after the death of typhoid of his beloved abigail. we do not know exactly what he wrote or thought, no record of it, but surely upon finally seeing the doctor, even though he is in the middle of the picture even , though he is in the middle of the picture, he must've thought it depicted american independence as it might have occurred in heaven as opposed to how it occurred on or in. -- how it occurred on earth. [laughter] harmonious, poised, consensual, contested, filled with rancor, demagoguery, and falls starts. the road to independence is flattened, made attractively smooth and straight. the same day that trumbull wrote to adams he went to jefferson and jefferson right spectrum as well. -- writes back to him as well. very interesting. jefferson was in full agreement with trumbull and what he done in this painting. the exact opposite of adams. [laughter] jefferson writes to the artists, without license the talent of imagination would be banished from all art. pace and judgment and composition would be of no value. on the same footing with the first painting. so, in jefferson's view, the point of good painting was to stimulate strong sentiment not to log in the banal facts. trumbull had put his canvas to the awesome task of arousing the patriotic feelings of viewers and coaxing them to collectively dream the dream that was american independence. so adams and jefferson are at opposite poles. each man in his own way trying to uphold the ongoing values of the revolution at a time, 1818, when the revolution was becoming hazy and the popular imagination. for adams, that meant representing the past with absolute authenticity and presenting it from descending into folklore. to him, trumbull was distorting history and producing a sublime deception as critics might have described it, because the page read never witnessed or recorded the events. -- because the painter had never witnessed or recorded the events. in fact, the classically trumbull admitted he wanted to shape the delegates -- he wanted to show them calmly, wisely, sternly. it converted bickering congressmen into stoic republicans governing. the incessant rancor inside independence hall dissolved here into the timeless calm. trumbull deliberately polished his picture with an iconic sheen and to adams that was a tragedy. but for jefferson, the equally daunting task was to enshrine republican values that had emerged during the revolution so they might be sustained and propagated. he understood and approved troubles project was the idea of -- trumbull's project because it held fast to the idea of 1776. jefferson endorsed trouble's -- trumbull's ultimate goal to create a patriotic fiction that had slipped the constraints of temporal logic and sequence to live outside of time. that is what the book is about and those are the principles underscoring it. their lives, in other words, are very intimate with -- there is jefferson and his love interest maria causeway. i put the images together in a cheesy manner i have to confess but there he is. [laughter] that is trumbull's portrait of jefferson at the american embassy in paris. so they are altogether in this. this is the nine foot portrait of john adams. they become the best of friends. so, right, it is the artist but also the founding fathers. i think i will stop there may be. thank you. [applause] paul: i am happy to take questions. you need the microphone, right? ok. here. up front. >> thank you. you ended with copley. you did not say anything about benjamin west. i know you do not have three hours to talk. but could use a little bit more about copley and his connection with the revolution and the same for west? paul: sure. i have five artists. they break into three different -- i guess if i wanted to categorize them, they are the bug eyed patriots. trumbull and peale fight for the revolution. they pick up the musket, do whatever it takes. peale becomes a lieutenant and trumbull becomes a kernel. -- colonel. gilbert stuart seems to have no political opinion whatever. he is in london for much of the work. he comes back in the 1790's with the express purpose of painting washington to make his fortune. and he does. he is not necessarily like, i am so happy to be in the united states, a free end independent nation. he is an entrepreneur. so your great artist of washington is an entrepreneur. he is erratic, he is running from the law. in perpetual debt across europe as well as the united states. he is an alcoholic. one of the reasons he has trouble with washington as a sitter sister is because his method to -- as a sitter, because his method of loosening up is to drink and drink. so he was never boring. an interesting guy. but pure entrepreneur. copley and west were sympathetic to the revolution. they wanted to see american independence. they wanted british abuse to end that they thought that war was completely incompatible with art-making. west is already in london from 1760 onward. he is so successful he becomes court painter to george iii which put him in a bit of a pickle during the war because he had to basically navigate his way through london during the war even though he harbored patriotic sentiment and the king knew it. in fact in one instance where there were a lot of trees in london who wanted to call out west -- a lots of tories who wanted to call out west in london, his biggest defender was george iii. i would not want anybody working for me who did not have strong feelings about his native land. copley stays in boston until 17 74 but boston is insane. they are ripping me heart out of his pictures, pounding on his door at night. have you seen so-and-so? we know you painted this portrait, where is he today? he could be murdered by these people. copley is sympathetic but he thinks i have to get out of here. i don't want to pick up a gun, so he goes to london. his writing letter saying, america will be free and independent. a vast empires someday. he and west together decide to go to parliament to listen to the king capitulated. they listen to the capitulation speech and there are records of the two of them along with other americans walking out feeling really good about this. and that is an interesting part of the people, how they weave -- of the book is how they weave their way through the most explosive moments of their lives. how they conduct their careers. >> thank you. >> you are welcome. >> you had mentioned peale's painting of george washington, somewhere between he did how many paintings -- how many survived or are known to exist and how common wasn't for these five artists to have duplicate paintings of subjects depending upon the demand i suppose and a follow-up question, it looks like george washington he just showed up for his face everything was painted around him. how long would he show? paul: an hour or two hours may be this was here in new york when new york was the capital. john trumbull paints is portrait here. -- his portrait here. we have washington's diary entries, he goes to see trumbull about 13 times for an hour. he writes mrs. washington and i , going to trumbull's studio. about an hour at a time. he gets sick of sitting for portraits. he says, i feel like a horse going to the trough over and over again. i have to just sit. so he gets quite frustrated with the process. everybody is clamoring to paint him. what was the first part of your question? >> how many exist? paul: i think around 15. there is one at the metropolitan museum if you want to see one quickly. one in brooklyn. some at the rhode island state capital. there are variants on it. one in the maryland state capital. they are here and there. some have been lost. there are some undersized but it ones. was stewart to painted the most of these. you refer to them as his $100 bills because he charged $100 for each one. ka-ching. they showed up everywhere. there were copyists. they made copies of the 100 and some odd he painted and there were oafish prints made and unofficial prints made. -- there were a official prints made and unofficial prints made. a couple of american traders brought with them one as a gift as a token of our nation. they brought to india a stuart washington. of our nation to you. who knows what happened to that. so they sort of saturate the visual landscape of this time. there is probably another part of your question i have not answered. >> how frequent was the duplication? did trumbull do it? paul: maybe once or twice. maybe a second version said there are not as many troubles -- trumbull's around. the most famous one is in city hall here. in the governor's room. more questions? >> obviously you focused on the top five painters contemporary to the revolution. i was wondering, one of the well-known painters was actually rembrandt peale, the sun of george wilson peale. -- charles wilson peale. i was wondering how he inspired his son to do the more recognizable portraits of the revolution. paul: his children were rembrandt, raffi l -- raphael, rembrandt peale. peal, michelangelo peal. rembrandt peale, one of the older kids, charles willson peale was from philadelphia but traveling all over, new york, but stewart travels around were all the -- where the capital is new york, philadelphia, , washington, d.c. the capital in philadelphia he goes there to paint washington and peale says, wait a minute. this is my city and washington is my man. stewart is selling pictures and all that. in order to make peale feel less bad stewart arranges with , washington to have charles willson come to the president's house and that is where rembrandt peale paints his one portrait of washington. he is getting in on this in the 1790's. i did not include him because that was a later generation in i really dislike the picture, too. [laughter] paul: but what he does is make this into a business. he then goes on and makes this oval portrait of washington. there is one in the oval office of the white house, usually behind obama and the back of the oval office. you see the rembrandt peale they are. what he did was he tried to take the best elements to create the standard likeness with the hopes that everybody would ask him to paint copy after copy. and he does. copy after copy after copy. he could as he is going to outlive these guys so he can carry this on. he can carry this on into the 1840's and 1850's. he can say i painted him from life. the appeals were real pagers but real entrepreneurs, two. peale ran a nature museum in philadelphia and when he died, most of a got sold off and pt barnum bought a lot of it and the portraits still exist in the second bank of the u.s. in theadelphia along with taxidermy remains of peale's pet eagle which was part of his menagerie. there are 50 or 60 portraits hanging there. it's a great place to go. >> it's a great place. >> at the new york historical society, the painting of studied west when peale with him, it's a beautiful portrait. next to it is the fabulous peale family painting that he worked on for 20 or 30 years of his entire family but in the corner is a bust of peale and benjamin west. there are three different images of peale on display next to each other. he managed to work himself into many things. >> you get extra credit for that. that is all true. he decided from 1780 onward, peale wanted to build an american hall of fame where he would take portraits of the great americans of the era. they are all men. i teach at a woman's college. it's not as if women were not respected and admired but virtue to women was domestic. they became the lint at conversation and reading and letters and music, things like that. but public virtue was entirely men. he ultimately painted 200 of those pictures, about 50 of them are in the second bank of the united states which is next-door to independence hall and they are great to see. when he had his museum on the second floor of independence hall, those portraits line the upper level. it would be above the flag on the lower level, he had cases and in the cases you could find bluebirdseagles, stuffed. his whole family killed them and he stuffed animals. you could find gems and shells and al qaeda minerals there. in other words, the museum contained everything that was unique about the united states, about america. be an american turkey, and american eagle, an american mineral, and american leaders. they looked different from european leaders. they were approachable and direct and kind. he excavated a mastodon in new york state. he assembled the skeleton in the museum. he was like pt barnum. was's why pt barnum interested. it eventually went bankrupt and went to his sons and there was a ranch in baltimore and it got complicated. he originallyg -- called of the american museum. this would be inspiration where you look at these great figures and you look at the things that made america a special place and you thought this would inspire. his fellow citizens. thank you for mentioning that. >> last question? >> if you could go back to the painting of bunker hill. probably hill, that's the best thing he ever painted. >> the figures in the lower corner there are very different looking than the rest. what is the significance of those two figures? ourhat is thomas grows in and we don'tsvenor know if it's is black servant or black slave who holds his musket the scene.he leaves i'm not sure it's painted differently but certainly it's on another note. of helpsure, it kind to close off the right side of the picture. parenthesis at the edge. he is looking back at warren dying and he has been wounded. i did not say anything about this but how does warren die? he dies as if it were in a tie in renaissance piata. this is right out of michelangelo. there are the wounds on the whole thing. he is holding up his right hand and he has been wounded here. again, a reference to a crucifixion. long after trumbull died, this by bostons used abolitionists to make the case for black participation not only in the revolution but the absolute necessity that the time has come to end slavery. they sometimes reference this picture. it was at the dedication of the bunker hill monument. at that event, daniel webster was there. there,nt john tyler was a slaveholder, having his black servant hold up his umbrella. -- john quincyts adams wanted to impeach tyler quincy,ome in massachusetts that day. shortly after that, there were prints made of this where the white thomas grosvenor is eliminated from the picture and you only see the black servant who then is basically promoted into the position of being a participant at the event. this became an abolitionist -- in all of trumbull's pictures, there were reminders and you know the work of the revolution is not over by a long shot. let's keep in mind that this is but the unitedng states is a perpetual work in progress. [applause] thank you. >> december 7 marks the 50th -- the 70th anniversary of the bombing of pearl harbor. when the factors of los angeles and detroit were producing for the war machine, the rest of the world would fall like. just after five on oral history, survivors from the uss arizona where 1001 hundred 77 crew members were killed on december 7, 1941 recall what they witnessed. at six eastern un-american artifacts, --the missouri was convinced commissioned in 1944 and saw action in the pacific. she is often remembered for one event and that is the surrender of japan at tokyo bay. visiting pearl harbor attack sites, part of the national park service world word to national monument, home of the uss arizona memorial. for complete american history tv schedule, go to www.c-span.org. our cox communication partners worked with our city tor stop when we travel tempe, arizona. the city averages more than 300 days of sunshine each year. learn more about all weekend here on american history tv. when charles hayden and some of the other folks came to this the most prominent features was this view. it would have been something that got people's attention but when you think about these pioneers going up here, they did not have these nicely groomed paths. they had to pick their way among the rocks and make their way up that trail. it's hard to say exactly what people were thinking but the earliest folks who climbed a pierce certainly were getting an eye toward what they might do to the area. was originally born in connecticut. he comes out west during the course of his life and travels over the santa fe trail. exit tofreight any arizona in the 1850's. he made it to tucson where he had a freight business, a mercantile business and he was positione had a judge so many people around the area for years new him as judge hayden. he is essentially what you would for taylor -- what you would for to -- referred to as a connecticut yankee in arizona who is now a man with a big freight business, a big sales or mercantile business. he very much as a frontier businessman in arizona. crossing forown the salt river. wasriver people knew erratic but they also knew it was a river that had a lot of potential for irrigation. when he came up here, i think he certainly saw the crossing. he would establish what was known as hayden's ferry shortly after. the one thing to keep in mind is the ferry business will only be part of the year. it will be seasonal.

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