Thomas Jefferson

This eight-foot-tall copy portrait of Thomas Jefferson hangs in the Virginia State Capitol at Richmond. The original portrait, painted by Thomas Sully, was commissioned by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which Jefferson had established when he was president. Sully went to Monticello to paint Jefferson in 1821, and the full-length portrait he later created remains at West Point. George Catlin, who would win fame as a portraitist of indigenous peoples in the American West, painted this copy of the portrait.