ABSTRACT
Artists, like probably everybody else, were participating in the initiation and growth of a new nation, and were constantly observing history in the making. People were self-conscious. As a group, these works were the first and most important pictorial icons of the new nation, key documents in the creation of visual pantheon of heroes to bind together the fractious colonies, each with its own history, into a united country. In these studies, Trumbull sketched the Founding Fathers engaged in the exalted task of shepherding into existence the Declaration of Independence, citizen-soldiers dying for their country, and generals gallantly accepting the surrender of their defeated foes. In all of them, Trumbull alluded to the highest forms of human behavior. For example, although the American General Warren was probably decapitated at Bunker Hill, Trumbull shows Warren's attacker's bayonet deflected in The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, since gentlemen were not supposed to act in a brutal fashion.
