The young republic

After independence, the new nation needed images of its heroes, its buildings and its ideals – and it borrowed the forms of antiquity to create them.

The Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the war against Britain created a new country that needed a visual world of its own. Artists were commissioned to immortalise the leaders and events of the Revolution. Portraits of George Washington became virtually national icons, and history paintings depicted the great moments, such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Architecture took its cue from the republics of antiquity. Columns, pediments and domes were meant to show that the United States was a new republic in the spirit of Rome and Athens. Thomas Jefferson himself designed his home, Monticello, and the University of Virginia in a classical style, and work on the Capitol in Washington began in 1793. The style is known as the Federal style and, later, Greek Revival.

Painting was still dominated by the portrait. Gilbert Stuart painted Washington several times, and one of his unfinished portraits is still used on the one-dollar bill today. Charles Willson Peale painted, invented and founded one of the first museums in the country. Art was meant to be useful and edifying, not merely decorative.

• Washington on the dollar bill
• Peale's museum
• Jefferson the architect