Scene from Ossian’s "Fingal": Lamderg and Gelchossa

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Scene from Ossian’s "Fingal": Lamderg and Gelchossa

Artist John Trumbull (American, 1756-1843)

Date1792

DimensionsFrame: 18 1/2 × 20 5/8 × 2 1/2 in. (47 × 52.4 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas, mounted on panel

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1958.27

Not on View

Label TextThe Scottish warrior Lamderg has just rescued his wife Gelchossa from the giant Ullin. As he leans heavily against her, she asks, “What blood, my Love…runs down my warrior’s side?” Though he claims it is Ullin’s blood, Lamderg soon dies from his wound. John Trumbull, who had been a military aid to George Washington during the Revolutionary War and later painted his portrait along with several other founding fathers, painted this work in Connecticut. He used as his source the wildly popular epic Fingal, “discovered” in 1762. It was supposedly written by a 3rd-century Scottish bard named Ossian, but was discovered to be the creation of 18th-century Scottish writer and historian James MacPherson.Published ReferencesSizer, T., "A Tentative 'Short-Title' Checklist of the Works of Col. John Trumbull," Art Bulletin, XXX, 1948, p. 219 (as Subject from Ossian, before 1815, lost).

Sizer, T., The Works of Colonel John Trumbull, New Haven, 1950, p. 79 (as Subject from Ossian, 1809).

Rogers, M., "John Trumbull's Scene from Ossian's 'Fingal,'" The Art Quarterly, XXII, Summer 1959, pp. 171-176, repr. p. 172.

Antiques, vol. 75, 1959, p. 485-486, repr. p. 485.

"Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, Jan.-March 1959," The Art Quarterly, vol. 22, 1959, p. 178.

Rogers, Millard F., Jr., "Artists of a New Nation," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 2, no. 2, Autumn 1959, p. 7-8, repr. p. 7.

Young, Mahonri Sharp, "From Howling Wilderness to Queensborough Bridge," Apollo, vol. 86, no. 70, Dec. 1967, p. 496, repr. fig. 4, p. 497.

Sizer, T., The Work of Colonel John Trumbull, rev. ed., New Haven, 1967, p. 104, fig. 212.

Jaffe, Irma B., "Fordham University'd Trumball Drawings; Mistaken Identities in The Declaration of Independence and Other Discoveries," American Art Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, Spring 1971, p. 37, note 102.

Jaffe, I., John Trumbull, Patriot-Artist of the American Revolution, Boston, 1975, pp. 233, 324-325, fig. 164.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, p. 108, pl. 9.

Mjöberg, Jöran, "Romanticism and Revival," in David Wilson, ed., The Northern World, New York, 1980, p. 210, repr.

Exhibition HistoryBoston Athenaeum, First Exhibition of Paintings, 1827, no. 77 (lent by Warren Dutton).

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1915.

Allentown (PA) Art Museum, The World of Benjamin West, 1962, no. 17, repr.

New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, John Trumbull: The Hand and Spirit of a Painter, 1982, no. 156, pp. 237, 249-251, repr. pp. 239, 250.

New Orleans Museum of Art, Jefferson's America & Napolean's France: An Exhibition for the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial, 2003, no. 126, p. 150, repr. (col.).