University of Virginia Library

Engravings

In mid-July, with the columns of the buildings of accommodation still gaping for their
capitals, Jefferson wrote to John Trumbull concerning engravings of the painter's
Declaration of Independence and Resignation of General Washington—a copy of the first
one intended for his old friend at Montpelier. "Independant of the motives of friendship to
which we shall owe your kind visit," wrote the octogenarian as he invited the celebrated
artist to Monticello, "I can promise you a gratification well worth the trouble of your
journey, in a visit to our University. I can assure you that, as a specimen of architecture
strictly classical, you will find it unrivalled in this country, and possessing the merit of pure
originality in the design. it is by such as yourself therefore that I wish it to be seen and
judged. the building however which is to be it's greatest ornament, and in fact the key-stone
which is to give Unity to all that is already done, will only have it's walls compleated the
present year, and will not recieve it's roof until the next: but this your experienced eye will
supply. it's Perspective would furnish a subject worthy of your pencil and of the burin of Mr.
Durand. it would be a very popular print." Asher B. Durand, whose engraving of Trumbull's
Declaration of Independence made the engraver's reputation (and proved a financial disaster
for the painter), never produced an engraving of the university although he later made one of
Monticello.[588]