The Spirit of '76

Archibald Willard (American, 1836-1918) The Spirit of 76, 1912-13 Oil on canvas City of Cleveland

Of all of the compositions conceived in Cleveland in the 1800s, this is the one that earned the greatest national fame. Willard painted it many times throughout his career. The example exhibited herecommissioned by City Hall in part to honor Clevelands most famous artistis the last. Willard devised the composition in 1876 at the request of James F. Ryder, a local photographer and entrepreneur. Ryder anticipated a large market for photographs and prints of patriotic subjects during the great exposition in Philadelphia celebrating the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. Willard first experimented with a comic image of drunken War of 1812 veterans marching in a parade; only as he continued working with the theme did he make it into a dignified historical subject from the Revolutionary War.