Art: Spirit of ’76

Known to every U. S. schoolboy are two historic U. S. paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze and The Spirit of ’76 by Archibald M. Willard. Some may be aware that the first hangs in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art but few indeed know that the original of The Spirit of ’76 is the particular pride of Marblehead, Mass, where it adorns that smug Boston suburb’s ancient Abbott Hall.

It has been estimated that more reproductions of this picture than of any other single painting are to be found in U. S. homes. Yet for nearly 50 years the zealous town selectmen have rigidly refused all requests to photograph it. Once 20 years ago, when this prohibition was briefly lifted, the selectmen who allowed new color plates to be made were defeated at the next election. It was therefore news indeed last week when the selectmen of Marblehead met and voted to allow Forbes Lithograph Co. of Everett, Mass, to make four-color process plates for a Lynn lamp company’s advertising campaign.

Artist Willard died at his home in Cleveland, Ohio 17 years ago at the ripe old age of 81. Though in his long lifetime he produced many such historical illustrations, none attracted the national attention of The Spirit of ’76, his most important effort. It was the sensation of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. None admired it more than that descendant of a long line of Marbleheaders, General John Henry Devereux of Civil War fame, who bought and presented it to Marblehead. His interest in the picture sprang in no small measure from the fact that his small son, the late Harry Kelsey

Devereux, posed for the young drummer boy (TIME, May 9, 1932). The model for the elderly drummer was the artist’s father, Rev. Samuel Willard. The bandaged fifer was Hugh Mosher, Civil Warrior, who actually fifed all the time he was posing.