Junius Brutus Stearns
Illustration — Signing of the U.S.Constitution (1856) • Illustration — Hannah Duston Killing the Indians by Stearns, 1847 Junius Brutus Stearns (born Lucius Sawyer Stearns, June 2, 1810September 17, 1885) was an American painter best known for his five-part Washington Series (1847–1856). He was a member of the National Academy of Design for several decades and a member of its council. He named two sons after him, one Lucius Stearns, and the other Junius Brutus Stearns, Jr.
Also recorded as James B. Stearns · Lucius Sawyer Stearns · Stearns, Lucius Junius
Junius Brutus Stearns
Junius Brutus Stearns · Legends Of America · Public domain
- Full name
- Lucius Sawyer Stearns.
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- painter.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Illustration — Signing of the U.S.Constitution (1856) • Illustration — Hannah Duston Killing the Indians by Stearns, 1847 Junius Brutus Stearns (born Lucius Sawyer Stearns, June 2, 1810September 17, 1885) was an American painter best known for his five-part Washington Series (1847–1856). He was a member of the National Academy of Design for several decades and a member of its council. He named two sons after him, one Lucius Stearns, and the other Junius Brutus Stearns, Jr.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Junius Brutus Stearns. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q6313706 · wikipedia · Junius Brutus Stearns
In this article
Death
Death
Stearns, Jr., served in the Civil War in the 44th Regiment. JB Stearns served in the Civil War as well, in New York's 12th Regiment. He also had two other sons, Raphael and Michaelangelo, and a daughter, Edith Sylvia. His painting The Millennium was submitted as credentials for his admission as a member of the National Academy of Design.
He died September 17, 1885, in Brooklyn, New York, in a horse-and-carriage accident after returning from a night at the theatre. He was 75 years old and was interred at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Arlington.
Birth place
Brooklyn.
Death place
Paintings
• Illustration — 150th Anniversary of Signing, engraving after Stearns painting Stearns is most famous for his series on George Washington. Of these his painting, Washington as a Statesman, depicts President Washington addressing the Constitutional Convention; it is the subject of a US Postage Stamp in 1937. From February 14 - July 26, 2026, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts exhibited Titus Kaphar and Junius Brutus Stearns: Pictures More Famous than the Truth which “juxtapose[d] famous 19th-century paintings of George Washington with contemporary portraits and sculptural works that offer 21st-century perspectives of those same subjects.” The exhibit brought together five Stearns paintings from 1849 to 1856 for the first time. Stearns also painted a second series of Washington in which he depicted free blacks. Not as much is known about this series or the intentions of the artist in so portraying blacks on the eve of the Civil War, although there was supposition by Mack, et al. Stearns' painting, Hannah Duston Killing the Indians (1847) depicts the killing by Hannah Duston of Indians who had captured her and murdered her newborn daughter in 1697. In the painting Stearns, for reasons that remain unclear, depicts Samuel Lennardson (Duston's fellow captive) as a woman. The six Indian children Duston killed are omitted. A second painting, showing Hannah's husband fleeing with her children, is now lost.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Junius Brutus Stearns”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q6313706: Junius Brutus Stearns
General reference · Wikidata
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessauthority record
General reference
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 18 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Paintings
18,452 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Jun Nguyen-HatsushibaArtist
- June BlumArtist
- June HarwoodArtist
- June WayneArtist
- Junye SongArtist
- Juozas JurkūnasArtist
- JuranArtist
- Jüri ArrakArtist
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Junius Brutus Stearns?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.