Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Capture of the Tripoli by the Enterprise
Thomas Birch (American, born England, 1779–1851)
1806–12
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 45.1 × 65.1 cm (17 3/4 × 25 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- Philadelphia
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Through prior acquisition of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
At the turn of the 19th century, conflict arose between the United States of America and the North African Barbary State of Tripoli. President Thomas Jefferson refused to continue to pay tribute or ransom to Tripoli to prevent the pirating of American merchant ships sailing in the Mediterranean Sea. Jefferson dispatched the American ship Enterprise to the Tripolitan waters as a sign of resistance just as Tripoli increased its tribute demands and declared war against the United States. Thomas Birch, an early specialist in maritime painting, captured the battle between the Enterprise and a Tripolitan cruiser in the Mediterranean’s dark, violent waters. The break in the clouds sheds light on this conflict and illuminates Birch’s fine details and precise rendering of these ships.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
