[Thomas Jefferson, bust portrait, facing left]

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Jefferson is shown here in a bust portrait turned to the left, a pose that follows the painted likeness by Gilbert Stuart, who worked from life and whose images of Jefferson became the model for many later portraits. The engraving was made by J.C. Buttre, a New York engraver and publisher who produced reproductive prints of prominent Americans for a mid-nineteenth-century market eager for portraits of the nation's leaders. The caption card gives no date, so the print's exact year remains unknown, but its source in Stuart's painting connects it to the early republic, when Jefferson served as the third president. Viewers may notice how the engraver translated Stuart's soft painted tones into lines and shading.

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