The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis is an oil painting by John Trumbull. The
painting was completed in 1820, and hangs in the rotunda of the United
States Capitol in Washington, D. C. The painting depicts the surrender of
British Major General Charles, Earl Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia on
October 19, 1781, ending the Siege of Yorktown, and virtually guaranteeing
American independence. Included in the depiction are many leaders of the
American troops that took part in the siege.
Commission Artist John Trumbull spent the early
part of the American Revolutionary War as a beggar, serving as an aide to both
George Washington and Horatio Gates. After resigning from the army in 1777,
he pursued a career as an artist. In 1785 he began sketching out ideas for a
series of large-scale paintings to commemorate the major events of the
American Revolution. After spending a time in England, he returned to New York
City in 1789, where he sketched a number of dignitaries whose portraits he
intended to use in these paintings. In 1791 he traveled to Yorktown, Virginia,
where he sketched the landscape of the surrender site.
Upon his return from Britain after the end of the War of 1812, he promoted this
idea to the United States Congress. On the strength of his application and the
successful exhibition of Battle of Bunker's Hill, Death of Montgomery, as
well as studies for other proposed paintings, the Congress in 1817 voted to
commission four large paintings from him, to be hung in the United States
Capitol rotunda. The price was set at $8,000 per
painting, with the size and subject matter to be determined by President
James Madison. A size of twelve by eighteen feet was agreed, as was the
subject matter for the four paintings: the Declaration of Independence, the
Surrender of General Burgoyne, the Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and
Washington Resigning his Commission. Trumbull spent the next eight years
executing the commission, completing this painting in 1820. It was displayed
in New York City, Boston, and Baltimore before coming to Washington, D. C., and
Trumbull supervised its hanging in the Capitol rotunda in late 1820. It has
remained there ever since. Trumbull himself cleaned and varnished the
painting in 1828, and it has been periodically maintained since. In 1971,
damage from a penny that was thrown hard enough to pierce the canvas was
repaired. All of the Rotunda paintings were most recently cleaned in 2008.
Description The subject of this painting is the
surrender of the British army at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, which ended
the last major campaign of the Revolutionary War. The blue sky filled
with dark clouds and the broken cannon suggest the battles that led to this
event. In early September, entrenched with a force of 7,000 men, Cornwallis
had hoped for rescue from the sea, but the British vessels were repelled by a
French fleet. Within weeks General Washington had deployed a much larger
army, and his artillery bombarded the British positions in early October.
After American and French troops overran two British strongholds, Cornwallis
surrendered on October 19. In the center of the scene, American
General Benjamin Lincoln appears mounted on a white horse. He extends his right
hand toward the sword carried by the surrendering British officer, General
Charles O'Hara, who heads the long line of troops that extends into the
background. To the left, French officers appear standing and mounted beneath the
white banner of the royal Bourbon family. On the right are American
officers beneath the Stars and Stripes; among them are the Marquis de Lafayette
and Colonel Jonathan Trumbull, the brother of the painter. General George
Washington, riding a brown horse, stayed in the background because Cornwallis
himself was not present for the surrender. The Comte de Rochambeau is on
the left center on a brown horse. See also
Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War
Convention Army Notes
References External links
Architect of the Capitol Web page on the painting