Thomas jefferson family portrait

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    Thomas Jefferson’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson Poses for a Presidential Portrait

    We hold these truths to be self-evi­dent: that all men are cre­at­ed equal; that they are endowed bygd their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able rights; that among these are life, lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness…  —Thomas Jef­fer­son, 3rd Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca

    He was a bril­liant man who preached equal­i­ty, but he didn’t prac­tice it. He owned peo­ple. And now I’m here because of it. —Shan­non LaNier, co-author of Jefferson’s Chil­dren: The Sto­ry of One Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly

    Many of the Amer­i­can par­tic­i­pants in pho­tog­ra­ph­er Drew Gard­ner’s ongo­ing Descen­dants project agreed to tem­porar­i­ly alter their usu­al appear­ance to height­en the his­toric resem­blance to their famous ances­tors, adopt­ing Eliz­a­beth Cady Stanton’s lace cap and sausage curls or Fred­er­ick Dou­glass’ swept back mane.

    Actor and

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    The Thomas Jefferson shoot

    The descendants is a special series for me, something which after coming into being 15 years ago will probably be a life long project.To date the project has a few ‘rules’  Firstly The historic figure should be no less than a century old, secondly the historic figure must have a point of interestThis I mean they should not just be a descendant of a monarch and still be a ‘serving’ member of a royal family - what of interest would this show?If there is an unexpected and less known path of descendancy it is far more compelling.Historic US presidents have always held a fascination for me, the founding fathers in particular.Around 5 years ago whilst researching the founding fathers I came across the story that after the death of his wife Martha Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson had 6 children with Sally Hemings one of the people enslaved on his estate.Something, it is perhaps fair to say, that you don’t tend to hear about so much.I became awar

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    Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart (National Gallery of Art)

    Thomas Jefferson's image was taken from life at least twenty-five times, from the romanticized representation of a minister to France at age forty-three by Mather Brown to John H. I. Browere's life maskering of the sage of Monticello in his eighty-third year. Jefferson sat for portraits molded in wax, plaster, and marble, and executed in oil, gouache, crayon, and gold leaf on canvas, wood, paper, and glass. Those who tried to capture his image varied in fame and talents from the American engraver Amos B. Doolittle to the internationally renowned sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.

    Asked by a friend, architect William Thornton, to name the best of the widely differing productions of this assorted group of artists, Jefferson replied: "I am not qualified to say any thing: for this is a case where the precept of 'Know thyself' does not apply. the ladies from the study of their looking glasses may be good judges of their own faces; but