A Life of Ambition and Drift Charles Philippe Hippolyte de Thierry was not a painter, but rather a nineteenth-century adventurer whose life was defined by the pursuit of sovereignty in distant lands. Born in 1793, likely in Grave, Netherlands, his early years were shaped by the displacement of a French family fleeing the Revolution. This sense of movement followed him from England to North America and eventually into the Pacific. He moved through the world with a restless energy, seeking to carve out a kingdom where none existed. His academic years at Oxford and Cambridge brought him into con…