Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson did his real work at a desk. He wrote an estimated 19,000 letters in his lifetime, and from 1804 he copied many of them on a polygraph, a machine that linked a second pen to his own so that every stroke was written twice.

He never stopped tinkering. He worked out a moldboard for a plow by mathematics, kept a revolving stand for reading several books at once, and designed his house, Monticello, then pulled it apart and rebuilt it over some forty years.

He went on to be secretary of state, vice president and president, and doubled the country's size with the Louisiana Purchase. None of that went on his gravestone. He asked to be remembered for three things, "& not a word more": the Declaration, the Virginia statute for religious freedom and the University of Virginia.

The portrait finds him at the desk with a quill in hand, glancing up from the page as if a phrase has just arrived. He wears a green coat over an embroidered waistcoat. Daylight falls from a tall window, a single candle burns on a stack of books, and crumpled drafts lie on the floor around his chair.