Gimbrede was born in Agen, France in 1781 but emigrated to America, where he worked in New York and Baltimore as an engraver and miniature painter, before taking up a position as teacher of drawing and of French at the West Point Military Academy, where he died 24 Dec 1832.
Judging by the comments on his grave at West Point, where it is recorded he was drawing master for 14 years, Gimbrede took up his position in 1819, see The History Box| Learning About New York State Part IX That does not mean he ceased painting miniatures after 1818, but presumably his output of miniatures was reduced.
Gimbrede was remembered by many West Point students for his comment at the start of each course; "There are only two lines in drawing, the straight line and the curve line. Everyone can draw a straight line and everyone can draw a curve line, therefore, everyone can draw."
Whilst drawing may today seem an unlikely skill for military cadets, in the 19C it was a vital skill, especially in the years before photography, so that details of terrain and enemy fortifications could be sketched and conveyed back to headquarters.
Gimbrede was also an early experimenter at wine growing in the United States. At A History of Wine in America "d0e5342" there is the quote:
"A few miles north of Croton Point, a Frenchman named Thomas Gimbrede was experimenting with native vines at West Point, where he taught drawing to the cadets. Starting about 1820, Gimbrede had collected every variety that he found growing wild in the woods and transplanted them to his garden, "manuring, stimulating and pruning them with great care, in the hope of changing and ameliorating their character." After fifteen years of such experiment, Gimbrede was candid enough to admit that he had had no luck whatever: the natives remained obstinately unimproved by their pampering. But perhaps this barren result may have helped put an end to the notion, so long and fondly entertained, that the "wild" grape could be "tamed" by so simple a process of cultivation in which, as one writer has said, the experimenter acts as a sociologist instead of a geneticist."
