Connecticut-based independent filmmakers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton of 217 Films announce that their new film project will be a full-length documentary on the important painters who chronicled the American Revolution and our emergence as a nation. “Glorious Morning: A Revolution Revealed” will be their tenth film in 20 years and the ninth “essay in film” by writer/director Michael Maglaras.
“Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, and Gilbert Stuart are the painters who chronicled our rise as a nation and as a republic,” commented Michael Maglaras. “In this new film we will celebrate their legacy and the inspiration we still derive from their glorious work.”
Peale (1741-1827) is the great artistic entrepreneur of the Revolution. Trumbull (1756-1843) is the master painter of both the scenes of battle and the scenes of surrender, as we brought the British to their knees at Saratoga and Yorktown. Stuart (1755-1828) is the great painterly poet of the Revolution…creating with grace and humanity our iconography…the faces that became what we now understand to be our “founding mothers and fathers.”
“These painters were, in the case of Peale and Trumbull, men of action, who smelled gunpowder in the heat of battle as serving soldiers,” said Maglaras. “With Gilbert Stuart, we see a singular artistic figure avoiding the conflict but giving us, with his iconic portraits of George Washington and others, our first sense of ourselves as a nation.”
Paul Staiti, Alumnae Professor of Fine Arts at Mount Holyoke College and author of the acclaimed book Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution Through Painters’ Eyes, discussed his participation in this new documentary: “I’m delighted to collaborate with filmmakers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton. Glorious Morning promises to be an engaging look at the art of the American Revolution and how we celebrated then, and can still celebrate, the spirit of the miraculous beginnings of our republic.”
Currently being shot on location in Maine, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., Glorious Morning will feature more than 75 paintings by these artists as well as their mentors, Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley.
“As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of our republic on July 4, 2026, it will be time to pause and celebrate the great tradition of American painting, which begins but does not end with Peale, Trumbull, and Stuart,” added Michael Maglaras.
Filming will continue through the winter of 2024 and the summer of 2025, with post-production scheduled for late 2025. This film will be released in January of 2026.
