in Charlottesville, Virginia, he fought in
the French and Indian Wars as a Virginia
militia man. Thrown into prison for debt,
he escaped Virginia and fled to South
Carolina by 1775, where he established
himself as a landowner and an advocate
of independence. In 1776, he was given
a commission as an officer of the South
Carolina militia and in 1780, after the
fall of Charleston, Sumter was named
the state’s first brigadier general and put
in charge of the state militia. British
commander Colonel Banastre Tarleton
rewarded him for this by burning his
plantation near Eutaw Springs, but Sumter,
nicknamed “The Gamecock,” continued
to harass the British army, serving as an
intelligence officer under Nathanael Greene
and coordinating the activities of the
militia with those of the Continental army.
Secondly, there is the significance
and quality of the painting itself. To
understand that significance, we need to
know something about Rembrandt Peale
(1778-1860), one of America’s great early
portraitists, who painted General Sumter
in 1796. Rembrandt was for a long time
under the shadow of his famous father,
Charles Willson Peale. The elder Peale
knew George Washington—the CMA
has Charles’ portrait of Washington on
view—and pain ѕ