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Lieutenant John Trumbull Ray

Andrew Robertson, Scottish

ca. 1814

Lieutenant John Trumbull Ray by Andrew Robertson, Scottish

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

1944.4.1

Tags

colonelbust

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; in 1792 she bore a son 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...

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