Dr. Jones, born at Jamaica, Long Island, was the son of Dr. Evan Jones and a famous physician himself. He began his practice in New York about 1752, served as a surgeon during the French and Indian Wars, and organized the medical department of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. Jones was one of the founders (1770) of New York Hospital and was one of its most celebrated physicians.

Walter Bradford Cannon was a physiologist and a pioneer in research on the interrelation of physiological and emotional reactions. He joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1899.

Gibbs, the naval designer, was born in Philadelphia and educated at Harvard and Columbia. During World War II, Gibbs designed Liberty ships, which he could produce at a rapid rate, and also landing craft for the navy. Probably his two most famous projects were designs for the "America" and the "United States" for the United States Line.

Gates was born in England and enlisted in the British army as a youth. He came to America in 1772 and purchased land in what is now West Virginia. Although by then a major in the British army he joined the cause of the Colonies when the Revolution broke out and was given the rank of brigadier general in the Continental Army, in which uniform he is pictured. In 1790 he sold his plantation in Virginia, freed his slaves, and moved to New York. He served in the New York state legislature in 1800-01.

The subject of this portrait was one of five Osage chiefs invited by President Jefferson to Washington in 1806. Saint-Mémin, a French engraver who came to America in 1793, executed portraits of the members of the delegation, which were published as engravings by Elias Dexter of New York.

William Burnet was appointed governor of the provinces of New York and New Jersey in 1720, and was named governor of Massachusetts in 1728. This portrait is related to a group of thirteen small portrait drawings attributed to John Watson, which are in the collection of the New Jersey Historical Society. All fourteen drawings were formerly in the possession of Mrs. Lucien B. Horton.

Thomas Cole painted this oil sketch as a preparatory work for his painting Last of the Mohicans: The Death of Cora of 1827 (University of Pennsylvania). He had recently come to the attention of the prominent New York artists Asher B. Durand and John Trumbull, and the critic William Dunlap, and was enjoying acclaim as a newly discovered genius of American landscape painting. Between 1826 and 1828 Cole combined his affinity for the Hudson River Valley and the nearby Catskills with his keen interest in literary and allegorical subjects, creating at least five scenes from James Fenimore Cooper's popular novel The Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826 (in addition to the University of Pennsylvania painting, others are held by the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the New York State Historical Association, and the Chrysler Museum). It was the most popular of Cooper's series of novels called the Leatherstocking Tales, which relate the adventures of frontiersman Natty Bumpo in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Cole and Cooper would have been acquainted through, among other things, their membership in the Bread and Cheese Club, a salon of New York artists and writers. Cooper was a great admirer of Cole, calling him "one of the very first geniuses of the age." The Historical Society's oil sketch closely resembles the University of Pennsylvania's version of the scene that depicts Cora facing her death at the hand of Tamenud, the Delaware Indian chief. Cora raises her hands in a prayer for deliverance as Uncas appears on the ledge at the left to rescue her. Cole rendered the N-YHS oil sketch in shades of brown, indicating that he was experimenting with the picture's composition before he added color. His debt to the English picturesque tradition is apparent in the trees and rock outcroppings that frame the scene, the panoramic landscape in the distance, and the stormy sky that echoes the human drama below. In the finished painting Cole enhanced the tension of the scene by minimizing the stand of trees to the left and focusing on the ominous dead tree that looms over Uncas, while enlarging and moving the figure group with Tamenud and Cora to the center.