Ohio History Journal

"SPIRIT OF '76"

 

"The Spirit of '76" is the most popular patriotic pic-

ture in the United States. This is a very broad state-

ment but since the appearance of the famous painting

at the Centennial in Philadelphia in 1876, it has been

reproduced in colors, steel engravings, half tones, and by

every process known to the engraver, as has been no

other patriotic illustration. This, of course, is not news.

The favor with which the people have regarded this

spirited picture is generally known. Perhaps not one of

the readers of the QUARTERLY who views the half tone

reproduction here, will see the picture for the first time.

Most of them will have seen it often.

The statement may be ventured, however, that very

few have known it to be the conception and work of an

Ohio artist. The original painting was made by Archi-

bald M. Willard, in the city of Cleveland, shortly prior

to the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876.

Archibald M. Willard was born in Bedford, Ohio,

August 22, 1836. His father, Rev. Samuel Willard, was

a Baptist minister who came to Ohio from Vermont.

His grandfather who lived in the Willard home was a

Revolutionary soldier and a relative of General Stark

who led the Green Mountain boys to Victory at Ben-

nington.

The boy listened with deep interest to the stories of

the Revolution as they fell from the lips of his grand-

father. From earliest childhood he was imbued with

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472      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications "the spirit of '76." The Willard family afterward were located at Kent, Salem, Aurora, Mantua, LaGrange, and Wellington, Lorain County, Ohio. When Archibald had grown to young manhood at the outbreak of the Civil War, he promptly enlisted in

the Eighty-sixth Ohio Regiment. From childhood he manifested a natural gift for drawing pictures. This tendency was noted with only interested tolerance on the part of his parents. When he was in the military serv- ice with his regiment he painted a number of landscape

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"Spirit of '76"            473

sketches of the country surrounding the Cumberland

Gap.

After the close of the War he returned to Wellington

with his comrade and close friend Hugh Mosher. He

was employed in the shop of E. S. Tripp, a wagon maker

of Wellington. The building in which he worked at this

time is still standing. He was employed to paint the

wagons. He soon added decoration of woodland and

animal scenes to the wagon beds and did successful work

in the painting of a number of circus chariots.

While working at wagon painting he devoted his

spare time and small savings to the study of painting on

canvas. His first paintings were of a humorous char-

acter. He had a keen sense of humor which found its

way to all of his early work.

"The Spirit of '76" was a development from a draw-

ing entitled, "Yankee Doodle." It was intended to por-

tray a Fourth of July celebration in a country village. In

it there were three figures that afterwards developed

into the three prominent figures of the spirit of '76. At

the center was a jolly elderly man with broad smile on

his face beating lustily on a drum and tossing one of

the drum sticks in the air. To his left was a fifer with

straw hat upturned at the rim and on his right a small

lad with drooping short rimmed hat also beating a drum.

The picture as it appears provokes a smile especially

when the title is written beneath, "Yankee Doodle."

It appears that a friend of Willard's, Mr. J. F. Ry-

der, had become associated with him in the production

of his artistic work. It was Ryder's business to repro-

duce the paintings in colored chromos and place them on

the market. This was done with considerable success

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474      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

and the proceeds of the sale enabled Willard to take a

short art course in a New York studio. This he did in

the year 1873.

His painting "Yankee Doodle," appeared shortly be-

fore the opening of the Centennial Exposition at Phila-

delphia. It was Willard's idea to take advantage of the

patriotic spirit that was abroad throughout the United

States preparatory to the exposition and to convert that

interest into cash from the sale of the colored reproduc-

tion.

While Willard was engaged in improving the paint-

ing, it finally occurred to him that it should be given a

serious treatment and that the name be changed simply

to the Spirit of '76. For a time the title to the picture

had been "Yankee Doodle" and underneath this in

smaller type, "The Spirit of '76." While he was contem-

plating changing the painting from a humorous to a

serious portrayal, his aged father whose portrait he had

used as the central figure, suddenly died. Thereupon

the artist concluded to eliminate every trace of humor

from the picture and to give it the firm and patriotic

spirit that his father so truly exemplified.

The fifer in the picture was his comrade of war-time

days, Hugh Mosher, who became a fifer in the military

service and who was a part of every patriotic parade in

the village of Wellington following the war.

The boy in the picture was Henry Kelsey Dever-

eux, a fine looking young lad who came to see Willard

painting on his canvas in Cleveland and who was given

consent by his parents to pose in the picture. This young

lad, now advanced in years, has lived to tell the most in-

teresting story of the development of this spirited paint-

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"Spirit of '76"                  475

ing in a neat privately printed book of 79 pages, from

which the substance of this brief account is taken.

 

 

INTERPRETATION

Mr. J. F. Ryder, the associate and friend of the

artist who followed this painting from inception to con-

clusion, wrote the following interpretation:

The idea of the artist in painting the picture was to concen-

trate all the determination and enthusiasm possible in a few

figures. No field afforded a better subject than the Revolution,

with its determined old heroes and the air of "Yankee Doodle" to

rouse them to the highest pitch of enthusiasm.

The three chief figures meet all the requirements of the situ-

ation and are in true keeping with the surroundings. Over them

lower the clouds of smoke from a battle-field toward which they

are marching. Behind them a few brave Continentals struggle up

the hill, while by the side of a dismantled cannon lies a wounded

soldier who raised himself on his elbow to give a last cheer to

the stirring strains of "Yankee Doodle." The lines have evidently

been forced back. The dying soldier and the broken cannon show

where the line has stood. The other soldiers have been retreat-

ing. But the three musicians advance and the sound of their

music thrills the retreating troops with new courage. Hats are in

the air; the flag has turned; the threatened defeat is about to be-

come a victory. The dying man raised himself to cheer. The

trio of homespun musicians are discoursing with all their might

that music whose shrill melody is so surcharged with patriotism.

The old drummer in the centre, bareheaded, grand in his fearless-

ness, without coat, one sleeve rolled up as though he had turned

from the plough to grasp the drumsticks, his white hair blown in

the air, his eyes set close and defiant as though he saw the danger

and feared it not, the sharp lines about his mouth showing a fixed

determination--all combine to make up that wonderful figure in

our history which no rags could degrade nor splendor ennoble--

the Continental soldier.

On the left of the brave old drummer is the fifer who seems

to have come to blow his fife, and he will do it as well here among

the flying bullets as in the porch of his cottage. His eyes are

fixed toward the sky as though reading the notes of his music on

the clouds. Around his brow is a blood-stained handkerchief,

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476        Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

which tells of the bullet which grazed yet spared him. His whole

energy is poured into the reed at his lips, and one can almost

hear the shrill notes of "Yankee Doodle" above the noise of battle.

On the right of the old man marches a boy, hardly in his

teens, whose drum keeps time to the beat of the other. His face

is upturned to the old man, as though he were his grandfather,

as if to question perhaps the route or the danger ahead, but still

with a look of rapt inspiration. No shade of fear lurks in his

calm eyes, while the rub-a-dub of his little drum sounds as clear

and distinct as the heavier roll of the aged drummer.

The entire group is conceived with a fervid sympathy which

makes the observer concede sure victory to the combatants; vic-

tory also to the artist. The man who had carried the stars and

stripes, marching under the same thrilling tune, put his heart into

the picture. The work was an inspiration. Mr. Willard had no

thought of depicting three generations of one family, but the in-

ference is so natural that he has cheerfully adopted it.

The canvas is large and figures are heroic in size. When

finished, the picture was placed in the show window of my art

store in Cleveland. The crowds which gathered about it block-

aded the entrance to the gallery and obstructed the sidewalk to

such an extent that it was necessary to remove it from the win-

dow to the rear of the store, where it was on exhibition for sev-

eral days, during which time all business in the store was discon-

tinued on account of the crowds which filled the place. The

interest and enthusiasm which it created were remarkable. The

late Right Reverend Bishop Bedell was a daily visitor and fre-

quently spent an entire half day, so deeply was he impressed.

The painting was finally sent to the Centennial Exposition at

Philadelphia and prominently placed in Memorial Hall, where it

created a notable interest throughout the Exposition. After which

by earnest request it was taken to Boston and exhibited for sev-

eral weeks in the Old South Meetinghouse. Thence it was taken

to the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, thence to Chicago, San

Francisco, and other cities, always by request--so great was the

desire of the public to see the painting which had aroused such

enthusiasm in the hearts of a patriotic people. At last it found

a permanent home in Abbot Hall at Marblehead, Mass., the gift

to that old town of the late General J. H. Devereux, who pur-

chased it from Willard to present it to the town of his birth. It

stands in the old hall which breathes of historic patriotism. It is

the pride of the people of Marblehead and of all Americans who

visit it.

Pictures have been painted by artists of great skill, possess-

ing qualities of technique of method, valuable beyond the works

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"Spirit of '76"                 477

 

of other artists; pictures which give pleasure to experts and con-

noisseurs. In the midst of such works "The Spirit of '76" stands.

The eye wanders from these works of great technique, and

is awed by the grandeur of the old man, by the force of the

fervid and devoted group, by the spirit which invades the whole.

Mr. Willard with his powerful but, perhaps, less finished touch

did more than please the eye of experts; he stirred the heart of

a nation.

In his brief but very interesting chapter on "The

Preliminary Sketches and Replicas," of this painting

Mr. Devereux says in part:

In 1912 a replica of "The Spirit of '76" was made by Wil-

lard himself. Willard was then 76 years of age. This replica

was executed for the City of Cleveland as a special Commission.

This is located in a prominent place in the new City Hall at Cleve-

land. It is fitting that this replica should be available in Cleve-

land where "The Spirit of '76" was conceived and executed by

a Cleveland artist and painted from Cleveland and northern Ohio

subjects. This replica naturally is not as well executed as the

original. This would be almost impossible at Willard's then ad-

vanced age. In this replica Willard incorporated a number of

changes. The coloring is different. He changed the arrange-

ment of the stars from a circle of thirteen stars to a circle of

nine with four stars in the center. He moderated the stride of

the men. He changed the wounded soldier in the foreground to

a more upright position. He changed the drummer boy. The

drummer boy who posed in the Cleveland replica was Willard's

grandson, Williard Connelly, a Cleveland Central High School

boy. * * *

Mr. Willard died at 4933 Holyoke Avenue, Cleve-

land, October 11, 1918. The funeral services were held

in Cleveland, but the burial was in the Willard lot,

among his old friends at Wellington, Ohio.

Mr. Henry Kelsey Devereux, the boy pictured in the

original painting, deserves great credit for the book that

he has published containing all of the essential facts

and much collateral information in regard to "The Spirit

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478       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications of '76." He has given to the figures in this patriotic painting and to the artist and his associates, something of the immortality that attaches to the picture which will live as long as the memories of the Revolution itself.

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