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The Continentals
Frank Blackwell Mayer (born Baltimore, MD 1827-died Annapolis, MD 1899)
1875
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 22 1/2 x 18 3/8 in. (57.0 x 46.7 cm.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, George Buchanan Coale Collection
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Frank Blackwell Mayer painted this scene of Continental soldiers on the centennial of the battle of Bunker Hill, the first great battle of the Revolutionary War. In 1876 he submitted it to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, an event that celebrated the founding of the nation. The painting was highly praised and became so popular that other artists copied it enthusiastically. The cheerful image of soldiers marching through the snow to the beat of a drum and the sound of a flute reinforced the glowing myth of the war, inspiring a renewed patriotism on the nation’s one hundredth birthday. (Page, “Francis Blackwell Mayer,” The Magazine Antiques, February 1976)
