Thomas Jefferson — The Virginian

In June 1776 Thomas Jefferson was thirty-three, the youngest of the Virginia delegates, and known in Congress less for his speeches than for his pen. When Congress named a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence on June 11, John Adams pushed the writing onto him.

He worked alone in two rented rooms on the second floor of a bricklayer's house on Market Street, Philadelphia, writing on a folding lap desk of his own design. It took about seventeen days. Adams and Franklin made small changes; Congress made larger ones, cutting roughly a quarter of the text, including his attack on the slave trade.

The painting shows him at his desk, draft in one hand, quill in the other. Fifty years later he put that document first on his own gravestone.

He stands slightly turned from the desk, as if he has just got up from it. The quill is still in his right hand; the draft is rolled under his left arm. The dark coat and buff waistcoat are painted almost flat, so the face and the red-gold hair carry the color.

The window on the left does the rest. Cool daylight falls across the papers and the inkwell, and beyond the glass is open country — the view he wanted, not the city he was in.