Marquis de Lafayette 6 Sep 1757 - 20 May 1834
TBorn Auvergne, FranceThe nineteen-year-old Marquis de Lafayette left France in 1777 and crossed the Atlantic to support the American colonies’ fight for independence. While at sea, he wrote to his wife, “The welfare of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind.” During the Yorktown campaign, Lafayette blocked General Cornwallis’s escape and forced his surrender. The Virginia legislature commissioned his bust in commemoration. This later copy represents Lafayette in the uniform of a major general in the Continental army, displaying the insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati, the fraternal order of Revolutionary War officers.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution