Marquis de Lafayette

The Marquis de Lafayette was nineteen when he bought his own ship, La Victoire, and sailed for America against the orders of the French court. He landed near Georgetown, South Carolina, on June 13, 1777.

Congress was weary of European officers hunting for rank. Lafayette asked to serve as a volunteer and without pay, and on July 31, 1777, it made him a major general. Six weeks later he was shot in the calf at Brandywine. Washington, who had no son of his own, came to treat him as one, and Lafayette later named his own son Georges Washington.

He sailed home in 1779 to press the king for help, came back with word that a French army was on its way, and in 1781 shadowed Lord Cornwallis across Virginia until the trap closed at Yorktown. In 1824 and 1825 he toured all twenty-four states, and in 2002 he was made an honorary citizen of the United States.

The portrait shows him in a dark blue coat with buff facings and gold epaulettes, with a pale blue sash across his chest. A black cocked hat trimmed with white plumes is tucked under one arm, and his other hand rests on a gilt sword hilt. Past a red curtain lie the white tents of an army camp.