Picturing the Revolution

Throughout the American War for Independence, scores of images circumnavigated the globe, fighting their own battles to establish a comprehensible narrative for the momentous events occurring in British North America. Differences in politics, disruptions in communication, and the delay of thousands of miles of distance produced competing and often contradictory accounts. Some images became enduring representations of the conflict. Others faded from memory.

Drawing from Historic Deerfield’s rich collection of Revolutionary-era materials, this exhibition explores the diverse ways that 18th-century individuals “pictured” or understood the Revolution as it unfolded. Looking across prints, drawings, maps, broadsides, portraits, powder horns, ceramics, and satirical cartoons, Picturing the Revolution highlights how images shaped local and global perceptions of the war: its landscapes, its actors, its causes, and its goals. Mining these complex visual records reveals the often-overlooked importance of pictures in the shift from revolt to revolution, and in envisioning a future for the new nation.

This exhibition has been made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism.