The Image of Thomas Jefferson in the Public Eye: Portraits for the People, 1800-1809

by Noble E. Cunningham Jr.

An important contribtion to iconographic studies of the presidency, this book employs an innovative approach. Sixty engraving, medal and silhousettes illustrate the images of Thomas Jefferson that were availabel to the common man. Without television, photography, or coins that pictured the head of state, the majority of American's in Jefferson's day knew his likeness mainly from engraved prints, many of questionable artistic merit. These contemporary images have never been collected in a single source and many have never been reproduced. Source, artist, and date are given for each. They reflect the public's fascination with the man and the office and they display the state of the arts in a young nation. For the most part they derive from artistic treasures we are familiar with today, especiallly the Houdon bust and the penetrating portraits by Rembrandy Peale and Gilbert Stuart. The likeness some done by such leading engravers as Cornelius Tiebout and David Edwin appeared as separate prints, in books and periodicals and sometimes as transfers on pieces of Liverpool pottery. Among the author's major contributions are important discoveries altering accepted conclusions regarding stuart's first life portrait of Jefferson.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

One of the foremost scholars of the life and thought of Thomas Jefferson, Noble E. Cunningham, Jr. served with the U.S. Army, 1944-1946, and received a B.A. from the University of Louisville in 1948. He earned his M.A. (1949) and Ph.D., with honors, from Duke University (1952). He taught at Wake Forest College and the University of Richmond before joining the history department of the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1964. There he served as associate professor, full professor, the Byler Distinguished Professor (1980-1981), the Frederick A. Middlebush Professor (1986-1988), and the Curators’ Professor of History (1988-1997). In 1997 he became Curators’ Professor of History Emeritus.

Cunningham was the recipient of several major awards and fellowships during his career. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Historical Publications Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a recipient of the University of Missouri Thomas Jefferson Award, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Medal, and the Missouri Conference of History Award. In 1994 he was selected to attend a formal dinner at the White House with other Jefferson scholars and President Clinton.

Cunningham’s exhaustive research in the Library of Congress and the National Archives underlay his pathbreaking explorations of early nineteenth-century American politics. His insights provided the foundation for the work of today’s historians of Jefferson and politics. Cunningham’s prolific scholarship has shaped our understanding not just of Jefferson but of the very nature and development of party politics in the early Republic. Cunningham’s first book, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789-1801, was published exactly a half century ago. He proceeded to follow the Jeffersonian Republicans as they became the majority party in Congress and took control of the presidency in 1801. The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power: Party Operations, 1801-1809 (1963) examined issues of patronage (both the formation of a policy and the difficulties of putting it into practice), party machinery on the national and regional levels, and the broader subject of the party and the press, a topic that is significant for early American politics. The Process of Government Under Jefferson (1978) remains the cornerstone for any analysis of Jefferson’s presidency and indeed teaches us much about the evolution of the institution of the American presidency. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Over the course of his work, which included more than a dozen books and numerous articles, Cunningham developed a profound respect for the third president’s abilities to build a political party and a consensus. His biography of Jefferson, In Pursuit of Reason (1987), was translated into several languages, including Chinese.

—Barbara Oberg
Princeton University