Lieutenant John Trumbull Ray
ca. 1814
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
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 War under W...