Browere, a specialist in life masks, approached the aging Jefferson about a new likeness. Despite the popularity of engravings based on it, William Thornton's outraged comment on seeing the Bass Otis portrait of 1816 was: "Never was such injustice done to, except by Sign Painters, and Genl Kosciusko." And of the effort by amateur artist and professional patriot Thaddeus Kosciusko, now known only from an aqua tint by Michel Sokolnicki, Thornton further lamented: "othing can be so bad, and when I saw it, I did not wonder that he lost Poland-not that it is necessary a Genl should be a Painter, but he should be a man of such Sense as to discover that he is not a Painter." For William Short, the 1786 portrait by Mather Brown contained "no feature" of his subject. While Jefferson was not one to single out for blame the artists who had failed in their efforts to seize his image for posterity, some of his contemporaries were less reticent. Thornton called it "one of the finest I ever saw," and artist William Birch thought it "the best thing that ever was done of him." Daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph considered it "the better likeness of the two hanging at Monticello," according to one great-granddaughter, and Martha Randolph may have been the original source of another great-granddaughter's assessment: " best gives the shape of his magnificent head, and its peculiar pose." Contemporaries were also enthusiastic. Jefferson spoke of it as "a very fine thing," and as the portrait "deemed the best which has been taken of me." Further evidence of his approval is its inclusion, along with the two other Stuart portraits and one by Rembrandt Peale, in his list of candidates for an "approved" likeness of himself, and his distribution, among friends, of the David Edwin engravings made from it. The family favorite appears to have been the "medallion" profile taken in 1805 by Gilbert Stuart. The image that William Wirt called "exquisite" and Thornton pronounced "superb" was unfortunately forever lost in the fire in the Library of Congress in 1851. It dominated the entrance hall of Monticello for many years. ![]() This marble portrait, which his family thought an "excellent likeness," depicted Jefferson at the age of forty-eight in Roman garb. Members of his family recorded that he considered the monumental bust by Giuseppe Ceracchi the chef d'oeuvre of all attempts to portray him from life. Qualified judgments aside, Jefferson was known to have two favorites. ![]() the ladies from the study of their looking glasses may be good judges of their own faces but we see ours only under a mask of soap-suds and the scrapings of the razor." ![]() Doolittle to the internationally renowned sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.Īsked by a friend, architect William Thornton, to name the best of the widely differing productions of this assorted group of artists, Jefferson replied: "I am not qualified to say any thing: for this is a case where the precept of 'Know thyself' does not apply. Those who tried to capture his image varied in fame and talents from the American engraver Amos B. Jefferson sat for portraits molded in wax, plaster, and marble, and executed in oil, gouache, crayon, and gold leaf on canvas, wood, paper, and glass. Browere's life mask of the sage of Monticello in his eighty-third year. Thomas Jefferson's image was taken from life at least twenty-five times, from the romanticized representation of a minister to France at age forty-three by Mather Brown to John H. Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart (National Gallery of Art)
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