John Trumbull

John Trumbull fought in the war he later spent his life painting. Born in Connecticut in 1756 and educated at Harvard, he served briefly as an aide-de-camp to George Washington in the first year of the American Revolution, then resigned and sailed to London to study under Benjamin West, the American painter who had become history painter to King George III.

His plan was ambitious: a series of pictures recording the birth of the United States while the men who made it were still alive. For The Declaration of Independence he travelled for years across Europe and America to paint 36 of the faces from life. In 1817 Congress commissioned him to enlarge four of these scenes for the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, where they still hang.

One of those pictures followed Americans into their pockets. Trumbull's Declaration of Independence is the image printed on the back of the two-dollar bill.