Whereas: Stories from the People’s House

Revolutionary War Veterans in the House Collection

Revolutionary War veterans are well represented in the portraits of the House of Representatives. Paintings of two heroes of the Revolution, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, have been in the House Chamber for almost two centuries. Five Speakers of the House served in the Continental Army during the war and are memorialized in the Speaker portrait collection. In a livelier vein, veteran and Representative Matthew Lyon wields a pair of fire tongs in the House print “Congressional Pugilists.” Check out a few of the images below.

George Washington

Painted after the famous Gilbert Stuart Lansdowne portrait immortalizing the former leader of the Continental Army, this version of George Washington took an unconventional route to the Capitol. The painting was originally owned by Richard W. Meade of Philadelphia, who gave it to the American Embassy in Madrid in 1818, as described in the inscription at the top of the canvas. More than 100 years later, it was brought to Washington from Madrid at the behest of Representative James Fulton of Pennsylvania and was hung in Statuary Hall in 1951. As in the Stuart version, Washington is posed with one hand on his sword, the other outstretched in a traditional rhetorical gesture, as if he were addressing an audience.

Jonathan Trumbull Jr.

The second Speaker, Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut, was George Washington’s aide-de-camp and the first former soldier to lead the House. The House acquired Harry Ives Thompson’s posthumous portrait as a gift from Trumbull’s home state of Connecticut in 1880. The artist modeled the likeness on a 1790s miniature bust-length portrait by James Peale. Thompson expanded the scope, making the portrait waist-length and set in a furnished interior, lending a greater sense of formality and grandeur.

Joseph Bradley Varnum

Joseph Varnum was a Massachusetts “minute man” at Lexington and Concord, and eventually the last Revolutionary War veteran to serve as Speaker of the House. His portrait—along with those of Speakers Banks, Sedgwick, and Winthrop, all of Massachusetts—were given to the House of Representatives on January 19, 1888, more than a century after the war ended. Charles Loring Elliott, a prolific mid-19th century portrait artist known for his fluid brush and unsentimental likenesses, based this 1850s portrait on an even earlier work by Ezra Ames that was painted during Varnum’s lifetime. The portrait’s emphasis on lively textures—such as the sitter’s unruly hair and lace cuffs and collar—give the painting a sense of movement and vibrancy.

Matthew Lyon

After the House failed to expel Matthew Lyon of Vermont for the “gross indecency” of spitting tobacco juice at Roger Griswold of Connecticut, the latter sought justice by attacking Lyon on the House Floor (then located in Philadelphia’s Congress Hall) with a cane. Lyon, who fought in the Revolutionary War with the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, defended himself with a pair of fire tongs. Commemorating the row between Representatives, this 1798 etching includes verse describing the scene, including the detail that Lyon “seized the tongs to ease his wrongs.” Following the tone of the simplistic rhyme, the grotesque, laughing faces (including that of Speaker Jonathan Dayton), and awkward, exaggerated poses further reinforce the absurdity of the situation.

There are even more portraits of Revolutionary War veterans in the House Collection: