Updated: February 12, 2026
Updated: Jan. 15, 2026
Discover the American Revolution intellectual foundations images behind our videos and posts. These visuals shape how we remember — and reimagine — the Revolutionary Era. Each image tells its own story, highlighting a key figure, event, or idea, with context about the artist and historical significance. Explore these Revolutionary Era visuals to dig even deeper into history.
Explore the Images of the American Revolution – Intellectual Foundations
One of my favorite aspects of the American Revolution is its wonderful images. These American Revolution intellectual foundations images complement our videos and posts, where there is often little space to share more about the images themselves, their artists, and their backstories. Yet we believe you should know them — at least to some extent — because they add depth to how we Americans perceive and picture the Revolution and, equally important, how our collective memory of the Revolutionary Era has been shaped and reshaped over the centuries.
Almost all of the images we use in our program, as well as the music, are in the Public Domain. For those that aren’t, we’ve included links, licenses, and attributions. If you use any of these images, please provide proper credit and include links when required.
This post features American Revolution intellectual foundations images presented individually, each with its historical significance and the artist’s background. These posts are designed for exploration — enjoy browsing, learning, and linking to related history posts. Explore these Revolutionary Era visuals to dig even deeper into history.
Age of Enlightenment
The American Revolution happened during the Age of Enlightenment, the timeline of which stretches from England’s Glorious Revolution to the beginning of the French Revolution, i.e., 1687 to 1789.
But as Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld explains in our program, it is incorrect to confine the Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason) to specific years. She also tells us that Enlightenment was not a European phenomenon, and describes the reciprocal influence of Enlightenment ideas across the Atlantic. She also explains that the logic and reasoning implemented to advocate for liberty during the Age of Enlightenment were also used by governments to quash liberty.
Dr. Rosenfeld’s books include The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in the Modern World and Common Sense: A Political History. “The Age of Choice” is a term she created, and it’s a term we discuss in our interview. I will provide a link here to my interview with when it publishes in our program.
Many of our Founding Fathers were influenced by and, in turn, contributed to the Age of Enlightenment and its ideas. Examples include Thomas Paine (see above), Thomas Jefferson and George Washington (see far below).
Although the men in this image are neither considered as our Founders nor are they American, each were important pillars of the Age of Enlightenment and their ideas and philosophies were adopted by our Founders and, at times, perfected and perpetuated.
From left to right, they are Adam Smith, David Hume and John Locke.
Click for image gallery.
Adam Smith
A Scottish economist and philosopher who is much celebrated in his homeland (just visit Glasgow or Edinburgh and you’ll see), Adam Smith (1723-90) held two chairs at the University of Glasgow: professor of Logic and professor of Moral Philosophy. He was a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. In addition, he is considered the “father of economics” or the “father of capitalism” – most econ students can attest to this.
Among his many works, he is best known for The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), both of which our Founders studied. For example, Alexander Hamilton was heavily influenced by The Wealth of Nations and adopted many of its ideas into our nation’s foundation – including establishment of a national bank – the First Bank of the United States (chartered by Congress in 1791).
This image of Adam Smith, as well as others, have an interesting backstory. Smith rarely sat for portraits. So his depictions are based on memory. This particular image of him is one of the best known. It is believed that the original image was drawn by James Tassie, who apparently did convince Smith to sit for a portrait in 1787 in order to create an enamel paste medallion. This particular etching may have been created by Cadell and Davies (1811), John Horsburgh (1828) or R.C. Bell (1872).
This image is in the Public Domain.
David Hume
Also Scottish, David Hume (1711-76) collaborated with Adam Smith on many works about history, politics, philosophy, economics and religion. Interestingly, Hume never became a university professor. And this wasn’t for lack of trying. Rather, it’s because he was barred from academia due to accusations of religious heresy against him.
One of his early and well-known works is A Treatise of Human Nature. Following John Locke (see below), Hume believed that all human knowledge is solely derived from experience – not innate ideas.
To help you better understand the importance and revolutionary nature of this philosophy, I invite you to imagine a time when royalty, nobility and aristocracy were believed to be innately smarter than the masses. Hence, it made sense that they would rule over the masses to, in essence, protect them. But if knowledge was not innate – then, arguably, masses could gain knowledge through experience just like upper classes of society. And if that was true, then were upper classes of society really entitled to all their wealth and power?
This 1766 portrait is by Allam Ramsay (1713-84), a Scottish painter whose specialty was portraits. He created portraits of many prominent Britons, including Queen Charlotte (in 1762) and King George III’s coronation portrait (c. 1762).
Hume’s image here is in the Public Domain.
John Locke
Unlike Smith and Hume, Locke was English. And he is from an era (1632-1704) before Scotland and England united (May 1, 1707), abolished the Scottish Parliament and created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Locke is widely known as the “father of liberalism”, and considered as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers. In fact, his writings influenced the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as French philosophers, e.g., Voltaire and Rousseau, and the American Revolution and our Founding Fathers.
He believed that humans were born with a blank slate – that their ideas and minds could be shaped and filled through experience. He describes this in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which was first published in 1689. It is easy to see his influence on David Hume, who similarly rejected the concept of innate knowledge.
This 1697 portrait of Locke is by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), an extremely successful German-born British portraitist of the late Stuart and early Georgian eras. As evidence, he painted portraits of Charles II of England (1678, ’81 and ’85), James II of England (1684, when James was Duke of York), William III of England (1690-1700, several portraits), George I of Great Britain (1714), Louis XIV of France (1684-85), Peter the Great (1698, when the Russian Tsar was in England visiting William III), Isaac Newton (1689), Earl of Marlborough (1690).
This Locke image is in the Public Domain.
Thomas Paine
Is Thomas Paine (1737-1809) the original Founding Father?
Before you answer that question, note that his 47-page pamphlet was published on January 10, 1776. Although this date is after the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 1775) and the King’s Proclamation of Rebellion (August 1775), it should be noted that independence at this time was not yet a commonly held aspiration. As Prof. Kaye explains, in late 1775 and early 1776 Gen. George Washington and his officers were still toasting the King – meaning that they still considered themselves British subjects and hoped for reconciliation.
Click for image gallery.
In this podcast, in a two-part interview, we analyze Paine’s life and his Common Sense. Prof. Kaye (see short video above) is author of Thomas Paine and the Promise of America: A History & Biography as well as many other works on Paine and the American Revolution. During our conversation, he highlighted something that I dont’ think any of us really appreciated before: that many of our Founding Fathers and future generations of America’s elite hated Thomas Paine!
As it turns out, this ostensibly small point divulges so much about the principles and philosophy behind the American Revolution, all of which I discuss with Prof. Kaye. My two-part interview with him, with videos and transcripts, is available here.
This portrait of Thomas Paine has an interesting history. It was painted by Auguste Millière, probably in 1876. But it is a famous copy of a 1792 work by George Romney. Millière version is oil on canvas, and was created after an engraving by William Sharp (1749-1824), who was a friend of Paine. George Romney (1734-1802) was one of the most fashionable English artists (painter) of his time. In addition to this and many other famous works, he painted Joseph Brant in 1776, which I discuss below.
Paine’s image is in the Public Domain (PD-Art: this is not entirely clear, this image may be a sourced or a purely mechanical reproduction of another image). For this post, we have changed Paine’s rectangular portrait into its oval shape below, and removed the portrait’s background in the featured image (on top).
The scan copy the cover of Common Sense is also in the Public Domain.
The Declaration of Independence
This broadside of the Declaration of Independence was printed by John Dunlap at the request of the Second Continental Congress on the evening of July 4, 1776. This image is in the Public Domain.
Who was John Dunlap?
He was an immigrant from Ulster, Ireland, who became a successful American printer. Dunlap secured a lucrative printing contract from the Continental Congress and, at the request of John Hancock, the President of the Second Continental Congress, worked through the evening of July 4 to print the first published versions of the Declaration, which are now known as the Dunlap broadsides.
According to historical accounts, the opening lines of the Declaration were slightly edited before printing—for example, the word “unanimous” was added. While most delegates did sign the Declaration on August 2, 1776, Thomas McKean, the delegate from Delaware, did not sign it until January 1777. By the way, John Hancock was the first to sign—and he did so prominently, giving rise to the familiar saying: “Put your John Hancock on this.”
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The Declaration In Our Program
In our interviews with professors who study the Revolutionary Era, we not only discuss the Declaration itself but also its global distribution and impact.
For example, Ivan Kurilla describes how Russian newspapers reported the American colonies’ Declaration of Independence, including reactions from Catherine the Great. Dr. Kurilla is a historian of U.S.–Russia relations and previously taught at Volgograd State University and the European University at St. Petersburg. Another guest scholar, Edward J. Larson, explores the evolution of the American colonies’ collective resolve to declare independence in his forthcoming book Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Adams, Paine and the Revolutionary Year of 1776. I have received an advance copy of this book and discuss it in detail with Dr. Larson.
I will provide links to these interviews here when they publish in 2026.
In addition to scholars featured on this podcast – Analyzing American Revolution, other historians on our sister program, History Behind News, have shared fascinating perspectives on the Declaration. I want to highlight two examples here:
- The first is my podcast conversation with Dr. Thomas Balcerski of Eastern Connecticut State University. In exploring the evolution of how America celebrates the 4th of July, Dr. Balcerski begins by raising an interesting question: why do we celebrate our independence on July 4? Why not on July 2? After all, many of our Founders, including John Adams, believed that independence went into effect with the Lee Resolution on July 2, 1776!
- The second is my podcast interview with Prof. Joel Paul of UC Law, San Francisco (formerly U.C. Hastings), during which he revealed a “competition” (my word, not his) between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In the early decades of our Republic, which document matter more to Americans? I’ll give you a hint: Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration, was the U.S. president for two terms.
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The above painting is titled The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, July 4, 1776. It has been displayed in the Cabinet Room of the White House since the late-1980s.
This work (c. 1873) is by Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq (1826-95), a French illustrator and painter whose focus was on military subjects. He was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III (r. 1852-70) for one of his military portraits.
In 1807, he was sent to the United States by the French Ministry of National Education. While here, he interacted with artists at West Point (US Naval Academy) and also at the US Treasury’s department of engraving and printing (French citizens were employed there).
It is very likely that he painted the above piece in France, because he did very little work during his U.S. visit.
This work is in the Public Domain.
Denis Diderot
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This 1767 portrait is by the French painter Louis-Michel van Loo (1707–1771). He was the court painter of Spain’s king, Philip V, and a founding member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. He later painted many portraits of Louis XV, King of France, and helped spread the Rococo style across European courts.
The portrait depicts Denis Diderot (1713-84), a leading Enlightenment philosopher and editor of the Encyclopédie. As with many of van Loo’s commissions, it conveys not only the subject’s likeness but also prestige and intellectual authority. This portrait is currently displayed in the Louvre Museum and is in the Public Domain.
Encyclopédie
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This is the cover of the Encyclopédie—officially titled Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (“Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts”). It was published in France from 1751 to 1772, with later supplements and updated editions. As we learned above in the discussion of Diderot’s portrait, he edited the work, with Jean le Rond d’Alembert serving as co-editor until 1759. The encyclopedia also included contributions from a wide group of writers known as the Encyclopédistes.
This was far more than a mere collection of facts. Diderot intended it to reshape how people thought, to make knowledge widely accessible, and to encourage readers to question established authority. As Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld notes in our interview, the Encyclopédie played a crucial role in shaping the ideas of the Enlightenment.
It covered everything from philosophy and science to the arts, as well as trades and mechanical techniques—a combination of theory and practical knowledge that was unusual for its time.
The first edition appeared in seventeen text volumes, accompanied by eleven volumes of illustrations. Later editions were simplified, condensed, and made smaller to reach a broader audience. While the initial editions were costly and out of reach for most ordinary readers, the work’s impact on intellectual life and the spread of Enlightenment ideas was profound.
This image is in the Public Domain.
“In the Salon of Madame Geoffrin” (1812)
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This painting imagines an evening in the Paris salon of Madame Geoffrin in 1755, one of the most influential intellectual gathering places of the Enlightenment. At the center of the scene is a reading of Voltaire’s play “The Orphan of China,” but the real subject is the culture of conversation itself—writers, thinkers, and artists exchanging ideas in an informal yet serious setting.
The work was painted in 1812 by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, long after the events it depicts. By then, France had already passed through revolution and empire. As a result, the painting looks back with a sense of reflection and nostalgia, capturing what salons represented rather than documenting a single historical moment.
Madame Geoffrin was central to this world. From the 1750s until her death in 1777, her home on the Rue Saint-Honoré became a regular meeting place for leading figures of the Enlightenment, including philosophers and contributors to Diderot’s Encyclopédie. These gatherings mattered because they created space for discussion across philosophy, politics, science, and the arts—outside courts, churches, and universities.
Scenes like this help us see how Enlightenment ideas actually moved through society. Books and pamphlets mattered, but so did conversation, performance, and personal networks. Salons such as Geoffrin’s were places where ideas were tested, debated, and slowly reshaped—long before they found political expression.
Today, the painting is held in the collection of the Château de Malmaison in Paris.
This image is in the Public Domain.
Kant
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Portrait of Immanuel Kant, 1768
Painter: Johann Gottlieb Becker (1720–1782)
Immanuel Kant (1724– 1804) was a German philosopher from Königsberg in the Kingdom of Prussia and is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment. His work shaped modern philosophy, particularly in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics.
Kant is best known for his doctrine of transcendental idealism, which proposed that space and time are not inherent properties of the world but forms of human intuition that structure all experience. According to Kant, we never know things as they are “in themselves”—we only know how they appear to us. In his landmark work, Critique of Pure Reason (1781, revised 1787), he sought to address skepticism by arguing that objects conform to our cognitive structures, a concept he compared to the Copernican Revolution.
He also believed that reason forms the basis of morality, and that aesthetic judgment arises from a faculty capable of appreciating beauty disinterestedly. Kant connected his philosophical and moral thinking to his views on religion and political order, advocating for a lasting peace supported by a federation of republics and international cooperation. While celebrated as a cosmopolitan thinker, Kant’s legacy is complicated by his earlier endorsement of scientific racism, a stance he revised in the final decade of his life.
This image is in the Public Domain.
Marquis de Condorcet
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Portrait of Nicolas de Condorcet, circa 1789–1794
Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, better known as Nicolas de Condorcet (1743–1794), was a French philosopher, mathematician, economist, and political thinker. He championed many ideas that defined the Enlightenment: free markets, public education, constitutional government, and equal rights for women and people of all races. Condorcet also advocated for social welfare programs, reflecting his belief in reason, progress, and human improvement.
Often called the “last witness” of the Enlightenment, Condorcet embodied its ideals of rational inquiry and the pursuit of universal rights. During the French Revolution, he opposed certain constitutional proposals, which brought him into conflict with the Jacobin-led Convention. Forced into hiding, he was eventually arrested and died in prison, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual and political influence that continues to resonate today.
This image is in the Public Domain.
Descartes
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Portrait of René Descartes (1596–1650)
René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who helped lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science. He brought a new focus on reason and inquiry, famously asserting “Cogito, ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am.” Descartes combined algebra and geometry to create analytic geometry, influenced epistemology, and played a key role in the Scientific Revolution. His work continues to shape philosophy, mathematics, and scientific thought today.
This portrait (1649) is by Frans Hals (1582-1666), a Dutch Golden Age painter celebrated for his lively, expressive portraits. Hals worked in Haarlem, where he painted wealthy patrons and their families, often capturing a hint of a smile or a spark in the eye that brought his subjects to life. Hals was originally from Antwerp but settled in Haarlem during childhood, along with many other émigrés from the South.
This imge is in the Public Domain.
First page of the Pennsylvania 1776 Constitution
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Pennsylvania’s first constitution, ratified on September 28, 1776, followed the state’s declaration of independence and quickly gained a reputation as one of the most democratic in North America. Its framers included Robert Whitehill, Timothy Matlack, Dr. Thomas Young, George Bryan, James Cannon, and Benjamin Franklin. Many were not part of Pennsylvania’s existing government but were elected by a court that included citizens without property—a remarkable experiment in popular participation for the time.
The constitution introduced a unicameral legislature and a collective executive, making Pennsylvania’s government unusually innovative and democratic. Its declaration of rights echoed the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, and some historians argue that its ideas later influenced the French Constitution of 1793. Pennsylvania’s first constitution remained in effect until it was replaced in 1790.
This image is in the Public Domain.
The Federalist Papers
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The Federalist Papers is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the shared pseudonym “Publius.” Their goal was to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the newly proposed U.S. Constitution. Originally published in newspapers like the Independent Journal, the New York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser between 1787 and 1788, these essays addressed the political questions and challenges of establishing a balanced government in a young republic. They combined practical political argument with reflections on human nature, governance, and liberty, making the collection a foundational text in American political thought.
Among the essays, Madison explores the dangers of faction and the benefits of a large republic, Hamilton defends a strong executive and outlines the case against a separate Bill of Rights, and both authors explain the framework of checks and balances that would define the federal system. Over time, The Federalist Papers became more than a campaign for ratification—they are now regarded as a masterful explanation of the Constitution’s principles, a guide to federalism, and a classic of political theory, admired for the clarity and depth with which they confront the enduring questions of democracy and governance.
This image is in the Public Domain.
About This Program
Analyzing American Revolution (AAR) is a special series podcast production of the History Behind News program. In this series, 33 professors (and counting) analyze the American Revolution from 33 different angles through in-depth interviews with host Adel Aali.
Themes of the Revolution
Tap below for a closer look at the Revolutionary Era themes we examine—and to meet our guest scholars.
Visit our Revolutionary Era Blog page for
- Interview Transcript Highlights
- Interview Image and Artist Highlights
- Quiz Answers and Backstories
Visual Index of the American Revolution
Explore the backstories and artist bios behind images of our Founding—before and after the American Revolution. These visuals shape how we remember—and reimagine—the Revolutionary Era.
Experienced Analysis of History
About HbN Program:
The History Behind News program (HbN) is committed to making in-depth history researched and written by scholars enjoyable and accessible to everyone. Our motto is bridging scholarly works to everyday news.
The histories we’ve uncovered encompass an impressively wide range of subjects from ancient history to U.S. politics and economy to race, women’s rights, immigration, climate, science, military, war, China, Europe, Middle East, Russia & Ukraine, Africa and the Americas to many other issues in the news. We also receive advanced copies of scholarly books and discuss them in our program (in the context of current news).
197 Scholars & Counting:
Our guests are scholars in prestigious institutions, such as Oxford, Yale, Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, King’s College London, Princeton University, Notre Dame, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, the Atlantic Council, Duke, Amherst College, University of Michigan, Rhodes College, Emory University, Northwestern Law, Vanderbilt University, US Naval War College, Air Command and Staff College, Marine Corp University, UVA, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, NYU, Rice, University of Chicago, White House Historical Association, Baylor University, USC, UC Berkeley, UCSF, UCI, UCSD, UC Davis, UCR, Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Democracy Institute, University of Aberdeen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, University of Navarra, University of Seville, Helsinki University, Diego Portales University (Chile), Lund University (Sweden), University of Edinburgh, Near East University (Türkiye), Cardiff University, the Free University of Berlin and many others.
They include Pulitzer Prize winners, renowned documentary producers, former White House advisors and other high-ranking government officials, and current and former senior reporters at The Wall Street Journal and New York Times Magazine. Many have testified in Congressional hearings and others frequently contribute to major media outlets and widely read publications, ranging from the BBC, NPR, PBS and MSNBC to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Think You Know the American Revolution?
