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To Recreate One of the American Revolution’s Most Famous Paintings, This Artist Painstakingly Crafted Miniature Wax Figures of the Nation’s Founders
Bartlett M. Frost’s diorama is modeled after John Trumbull’s depiction of the presentation of the Declaration of Independence. Newly conserved, the work is now on view at the National Portrait Gallery
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When the American artist John Trumbull set out to create a painting commemorating the Declaration of Independence in 1786, a decade after the signing, he wasn’t overly concerned with historical accuracy.
The event depicted in Trumbull’s work is the presentation of the Declaration by its authors, the Committee of Five: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. These men drafted the Declaration together, with Jefferson serving as the text’s primary author.
Contrary to the painting’s title, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, this meeting took place on June 28, 1776. And some of the individuals shown weren’t actually present during the relevant session of the Second Continental Congress. The layout and look of the room are also wrong, from doors in incorrect locations to embellishments that suggest the space was elegantly decorated.
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Instead of recording the events of the summer of 1776 as they happened, Trumbull sought “to accurately represent the faces of the people involved,” hoping that realistic portraits of the nation’s founders would inspire viewers to embrace the “noble virtues that these men were believed to personify,” says Robyn Asleson, a curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG). Thirty-six of the featured individuals sat in person for Trumbull, who fine-tuned their likenesses over three decades. Today, Trumbull’s original painting is housed at the Yale University Art Gallery. A larger—and far more famous—version that he created between 1817 and 1818 adorns the Rotunda of the United States Capitol.
In 1968, NPG asked diorama maker Bartlett M. Frost to recreate Trumbull’s scene in a different medium: wax. Staff knew that they wouldn’t be able to borrow the monumental Capitol version, so they wanted to find another way to honor what was “seen at the time as the most important representation of an American history event,” Asleson says.
According to Asleson, Frost’s large-scale diorama went on view at NPG in 1969. It was also displayed during the Smithsonian’s 1976 bicentennial celebrations but eventually ended up in storage, where it was forgotten for decades.
Now, as the U.S. prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, Frost’s diorama is returning to the spotlight. As a work based on a painting that was made for the tenth anniversary of American independence, Asleson says, the scene “documents the various ways that Americans have celebrated and commemorated this important event at different historical junctures.”
The 1.5-foot-tall, 4.5-foot-wide and 3-foot-deep diorama is now on view in an ongoing NPG exhibition titled “Out of Many: Portraits From 1600 to 1900.” Newly conserved with financial support from the Collections Care and Preservation Fund, the diorama is accompanied by an enlarged detail from Trumbull’s painting that highlights the five delegates at the center of the scene.
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Did you know? The signing of the Declaration of Independence
- Trumbull’s painting is often misidentified as a portrayal of the signing of the Declaration on July 4, 1776.
- But the Declaration wasn’t signed on July 4. Most of the 56 signers only put quill to parchment on August 2, nearly a month after the document’s adoption. Several signed even later.
Long overlooked, Frost’s diorama was in need of “a complete conservation treatment,” Asleson notes. She says that conservator Steven Pickman “was excited to take on the task of reattaching arms and legs, toppled chairs and tables, and missing feathers from quill pens. He really took a deep dive into the way that those figures were made.” NPG staff also devised a motion-activated LED lighting system that encourages visitors to appreciate the intricate details of Frost’s figurines.
To craft the scene, Frost created wax sculptures modeled on the men in Trumbull’s work. (A second diorama artist, Charles E. Plastow, also contributed to the project, possibly working on the setting and armature.) Frost started the process by pouring wax into plaster casts, then peeling the plaster away and inserting wire into the figure to reinforce it. Next, he began “scraping, lifting out, rounding, smoothing until the wax figure [became] a four-inch replica of the desired character,” the Christian Science Monitor wrote in 1969. The diorama maker applied color with a brush before adding imitation pearl eyes, hair trimmed from goat pelts, and handcrafted clothing and shoes.
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At first glance, Frost’s diorama is almost indistinguishable from Trumbull’s two-dimensional painting. Upon closer inspection, however, viewers will be able to discern the true nature of the work. “The three-dimensional box actually recedes into space, diminishing in size,” Asleson says. The wax founders in the foreground are larger than those seated in the background; at the very back of the scene, some figures are simply cut out of metal and painted, yet they look as real as the sculptures in front of them.
“Any attempt to make realistic, lifelike figures—figures with personality—must eventually go beyond craftsmanship,” Frost wrote in a 1960 essay. “The best diorama figures will only look like stiff little mannequins unless we plan them with human behavior in mind.” According to the Christian Science Monitor, Frost expanded on this philosophy by telling a spectator that “if I can’t get total realism, the whole thing is futile.”
Described by a peer as “the greatest dioramist in the world,” Frost was “the logical choice” to create the model, Asleson says. Largely self-taught, he worked for the Illinois State Museum and the Detroit Historical Museum, crafting history dioramas for both institutions.
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If modeling historical figures whose appearances are well known, Frost wrote in his essay, then “that is the face that must be done, or you will be defeated before you start.” In instances when few or no likenesses survive, however, Frost encouraged his fellow sculptors to learn as much as they could about the person’s actions, thoughts and reputation, adding up this information to “develop an impression, or a conviction, on how he ought to look.”
By associating the subject’s “recorded behavior with persons of your acquaintance,” the diorama maker added, the individual becomes “a definite physical personality in your mind’s eye. … Now, and only now, should you start the figure.”
Today, dioramas—whether taxidermy or more in line with the style created by Frost—have largely fallen out of fashion, with some observers raising concerns that “they weren’t altogether historically accurate,” Asleson says. At NPG specifically, dioramas are rare, as “portrait artists don’t usually work in diorama form, although they do often work in wax,” the curator adds.
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Two such artists are highlighted near Frost’s diorama: Margaret Todd Whetten, who ran a safehouse for patriot spies, and Patience Lovell Wright, a sculptor who moonlighted as a spy for Ben Franklin by hiding messages in the heads of her wax creations. “Out of Many” also features a new gallery honoring individuals who laid the groundwork for American independence, including George Washington, Common Sense author Thomas Paine and first lady Abigail Adams.
Reflecting on what she hopes visitors take away from the diorama, Asleson says that she wants children in particular to “find it really exciting to press their noses up against the glass and feel like they’re in the ‘room where it happened,’ so to speak.” She invites older museumgoers to think about the different time periods referenced in the display, from 1776 to 1976 to today. “The country’s changed a lot,” the curator says, “and it’s just interesting to see how one object can tell that story over time.”
Frost’s Declaration of Independence diorama is on view in “Out of Many: Portraits From 1600 to 1900” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
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