Self-portrait 1777

This is a self-portrait made by John Trumbull, who lived from 1756 to 1843, using oil on canvas. Look closely at the materiality of this painting, and you’ll see that the quality of the finished portrait owes so much to the labor invested in creating it. Every brushstroke, every carefully mixed pigment, speaks to Trumbull's mastery of his craft. The texture of the paint itself, applied in layers to achieve depth and luminosity, invites you to examine the process of its creation. In Trumbull’s time, being a painter required immense skill and effort, from preparing canvases to grinding and mixing pigments by hand. All of this painstaking work was necessary before he could even begin to capture the likeness of his sitter. It serves as a reminder of the profound value of human skill, and the labor embedded in every work of art. So we should recognize that the ‘self’ in this self-portrait is inseparable from all that work.