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Lieutenant John Trumbull Ray

Thomas Seir Cummings

ca. 1830

Lieutenant John Trumbull Ray by Thomas Seir Cummings

Medium

Painting-Miniature

Classification

Painting-Miniature

Department

Smithsonian Collection

Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Credit

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Catherine Walden Myer Fund

Accession Number

1942.11.9

Tags

captainbust

About this artwork

John Trumbull Ray was the illegitimate son of Captain John Trumbull, one of colonial America’s leading portrait painters. Following the death of his first love, Trumbull had an affair with one of his brother’s servants, a woman named Temperance Ray. She bore a son in 1792 who strongly resembled Trumbull. Trumbull provided money for the boy’s upbringing, passing him off as his “nephew.” Against his father’s wishes, Ray enlisted in the British army in 1812, and served in the Peninsular...

About the Artist

Thomas Seir Cummings · 1804–1894

American (born England), Bath 1804–1894 Hackensack, New Jersey

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