John Trumbull's famous painting of Bunker Hill shows an inspiring American defeat and a noble death, and this Yale lecture asks how much of that is history and how much is invention. The speaker, part of the course Let This Be a Lesson, establishes that Trumbull was present in the region during the battle and traces what he could plausibly have known about the actual fighting on June 17, 1775. The lecture then turns to composition: who Trumbull placed at the center of the canvas, which figures he idealized, and how he used the scene to make an argument about the character and values of the combatants on both sides. Treating the painting as a primary source rather than a simple illustration, the lecture works through the gap between documented event and constructed image, showing how a founding-era artist shaped national memory through selective, deliberate choices on canvas.