The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill, June 17, 1775 (Sketch)

Smoke drifts across the sky as soldiers surge together in this fierce depiction of the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought in June of 1775. At the heart of the tangle of bayonets and falling bodies lies General Joseph Warren, a Boston doctor who gave up a command position to fight beside ordinary soldiers. He was killed in the closing moments of the fight, and John Trumbull built the whole composition around his death. Because this is a sketch rather than the finished work, it carries a rougher, more urgent energy, with figures caught mid-motion and the gray tones lending the scene a stormy, dreamlike quality.

Trumbull knew war from the inside. He fought in the Revolution and spent time serving as an aide to George Washington, which gave him a firsthand understanding of the chaos he set out to paint. His goal was ambitious: to record the founding moments of the new nation so that people down the line would remember them. The result belongs to the tradition of grand history painting, where artists staged crowds of people almost like a theater scene meant to stir strong emotion.

Amid the violence, small human gestures stand out. A British officer stretches his arm to keep a fellow soldier from striking the wounded Warren, a quiet act of decency in the middle of the killing. Trumbull seemed to want both truths on the canvas at once, the cruelty of combat and the rare sparks of honor that could pass between enemies.