Burgess, Tristam (1770 - 1853)
Role: Professor of Oratory and Belles LettresDates: 1815 - 1827
Portrait Location: Library Annex
Artist: King, Charles Bird (1785 - 1862)
Portrait Date: 1857
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24 1/2
Framed Dimensions: 32 1/2
Brown Portrait Number: 12
Brown Historical Property Number: 611
Tristam Burgess was born February, 1770, to John and Abigail (Chace) Burgess of Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from the College of Rhode Island, later Brown University, in 1796 and was admitted to the Bar in 1799. During his law studies, he opened a "day school" for young ladies in Providence. He was elected to the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1811, and in 1817, two years after accepting a professorship in oratory and belles letters at Brown, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. He served as a professor at Brown until 1825, when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. President Wayland determined at that time that Burgess's political commitments would interfere with his attendance as a professor. Burgess served in the House for five 2-year terms.
Artist Charles Bird King, born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1785, moved to Washington DC in 1816, where he became the leading portrait painter. Prior to settling in the nation's capitol, he had studied for ten years with Benjamin West in London. His works have been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and at the White House. King is best remembered for his portraits of American Indians, and he is responsible for a set of Indian delegation paintings in Harvard's Peabody Museum, which took the artist 16 years to complete. King presented Burgess's portrait as a gift to the corporation in 1857.