Portrait of Roger Sherman (American Founding Father painting, American 1721-1793) ( 1859 )
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Height: 21 in (53.34 cm)Width: 25 in (63.5 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
American School, 19th century
Faint/ indistinct signature and date middle right possible date1859.
Portrait of Roger Sherman (1721-1793), full-length, seated at his desk with books and globe.
Provenance: Private collection, France
The painting is in overall very good and sound condition
The painting seems to based upon an earlier version after Ralph Earl.
Declaration of Independence Signer, United States Constitution Signer, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator. He is also the only man to sign all four founding documents of the United States: the Articles of Association (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (1777), and the Constitution of the United States (1787). Roger Sherman was born in Newton, Massachusetts, near Boston, to a poor farming family. To help earn additional money, his father also made shoes, and Roger was taught the shoe-making trade. In 1743, when he was 19 years old, his father died, and the Shermans moved to New Milford, Connecticut, where his older brother lived. For a time, he continued to farm and to make shoes. He studied to become a surveyor, and, at age 24, he was appointed surveyor of New Haven County, Connecticut. Roger Sherman would later run a
country store, become a lawyer, serve as a legislator and judge, and as Judge of the Connecticut Superior Court from 1766 to 1789. In 1774, he was elected to the First Continental Congress. At first, many delegates discounted his rough, homemade clothing and lack of a wig (all gentlemen wore wigs in those days), but his words and demeanor won him respect. Among the first patriot leaders to deny the supremacy of the British Parliament over the Colonies, he became influential in the Continental Congress defending that cause. He served on the committee to write the Declaration, and, although his words did not go into the document, his views did. Roger Sherman’s greatest service to his country
came after independence was won, during the drafting of the United States Constitution. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he presented the Connecticut Compromise, a proposal that resolved the major differences between the large states and the small states on representation – that each state would have a Representative based upon its population, and an equal number of Senators. It was this compromise that helped to get all of the states to agree on the Constitution, and, for this reason, Connecticut is called “the Constitution State.” He was elected as an At-Large Representative from Connecticut to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1789 to 1791, then as a
Senator from Connecticut to the United States Senate, serving from 1791 until his death in 1793, at the age of 72.