Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/681

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In America. 651 American artists. He combined the professions of a soldier and a painter, and thus had the means of being an eye-witness of scenes — such as the storming of the works of Burgoyne at Saratoga — which suggested the subjects of many of the works which have made his name famous. He graduated at Harvard, entered the army, and was made aide-de-camp to Washington. In 1780 he went to London, where he studied under his fellow-countryman, West. Arrested as a spy, he was obliged to return to America, but on the cessation of hostilities, he went again to England, and resumed his studies under West. After a visit of nineteen years (1796 — 1815), seven of which were spent in diplomatic service, he lived constantly in America. He died in New York, at the advanced age of eighty-seven, and was buried in Yale College. His four great works executed in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington — the Declaration of Independence ; the Sur- render of Burgoyne; the Surrender of Comwallis ; and the Resignation of Washington at Annapolis — have since been moved to the Art Gallery in Yale College. Of other works we may notice — in the City Hall, New York, portraits of Governors Lewis and Clinton ; at New Haven the Death of General Montgomery, " one of the most spirited battle-pieces ever painted," the Battle of Bunker s Hill, and a full-length Portrait of Washington. His works were unequal in merit ; his male portraits were far more successful than his female. He was one of the founders, and the first President, of the American Academy of Fine Arts. John Wesley Jarvis and Thomas Sully (1783—1872), natives of England, were also successful as portrait-painters. Sully's female portraits possess great sweetness, but his