(French, 1826-1895)
Samuel Adams (1722-1803), c. 1870-73
Ink and watercolor on paper, 8 3/8 x 5 ¾ inches
Inscribed in ink at upper left: “7. Samuel Adams, Massachusetts”
Inscribed in ink at lower left: “[illegible] en noir, bas gris. boucles d’argent/[illegible] souliers.”
(Translation: “[illegible] in black, gray stockings. silver buckles/[illegible] shoes”)
Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq, a student of the well-known French painter and teacher Thomas Couture (1815-1879), became interested in painting subjects from American history while on a mission to the United States, where the French minister of education had sent him in 1870 to study American methods of higher education in art. While in Washington, D.C., Armand-Dumaresq would certainly have seen John Trumbull’s (1756-1843) 12-by-18-foot Declaration of Independence (1818-24) in the rotunda of the Capitol. Trumbull began his first version of the subject in Paris in 1786. He worked on it for about ten years, painting thirty-six of the forty-eight portraits from life. That Armand-Dumaresq derived his likenesses from Trumbull’s is shown by the numbers preceding the sitters’ names inscribed on the drawings. The number “7” identifies Samuel Adams in a printed key to an 1823 engraving after the painting by Asher B. Durand (1796-1886).
Armand-Dumaresq rearranged Trumbull’s figures into his own composition to create his first Declaration of Independence in 1873 (location unknown). He exhibited it at the Salon in Paris in 1873 and at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. A replica by the artist and a drawing are in the collection of the White House in Washington, D.C., and a smaller oil remains in the collection of the artist’s family in France.
About the Artist
(French, 1826-1895)
Charles Edouard Armand-Dumaresq, a student of the well-known French painter and teacher Thomas Couture (1815-1879), became interested in painting subjects from American history while on a mission to the United States, where the French minister of education had sent him in 1870 to study American methods of higher education in art.
