Revolutionary War Realism at Fraunces Tavern Museum

"Spirit of '76" by John Ward Dunsmore (1907)

If ever there were an artist passionate about the American Revolution, it was John Ward Dunsmore. Fed on tales of the war by his DAR mother, Dunsmore never tired of painting pivotal moments in Revolutionary War history. Used in children's books and textbooks and reproduced on a special coin by the United States Mint, many Americans would come to see the war through the vivid imagination of this Indiana-born artist.

"Dunsmore: Illustrating the American Revolutionary War," 47 newly restored paintings, is now on view at the Fraunces Tavern Museum, a fitting venue for the artist who lived from 1856 to 1945. The building's tavern, in operation since 1762, was the site of George Washington's farewell to his officers at the end of the Revolution.

Dunsmore, it turns out, was a master of telling a story through paintings as well as a technically gifted artist. You feel the sorrow of a family seeing a son off for war, the urgency of a man on horseback hurrying a farmer to join his militia, the heat of the muskets, the look of shock on the face of Gen. Washington as he peers upon a soldier's bloody footsteps in the Valley Forge snow.

Dunsmore took pride in the accuracy of his paintings. In his studio at 96 Fifth Ave., he collected Revolutionary War canteens, muskets, buttons, chairs, hats, uniforms and other memorabilia to use as references. He hired actors to pose for the events he recreated, read Paul Revere's story of his midnight ride to confirm the color of  the messenger's horse and spent two weeks at Mt. Vernon sketching the inside of Washington's home. Researching a single painting could take up to six months.

Still, he often saw the war through a "rose-colored lens," said Jessica Phillips, the museum's executive director.

"The paintings embodied the sentiment of the Revolution," Phillips said, "good versus evil. Washington was always represented as the stoic leader, overseeing things, looking down on the fighting army with concern."  

Although the artist painted some battle scenes, his strength was in memorializing the smaller, human stories in the drama: a woman frantically turned cannoneer after her husband has fallen; a British officer’s interrogation of Lydia Darrah, suspected of disclosing an attack on the Americans. (The British were quartering in her Philadelphia home, and she had hidden in a closet to eavesdrop on their plans.)

It took Fraunces Tavern Museum 11 years and $150,000 to restore the show's paintings, which had suffered from water damage, been exposed to light and cigarette smoke and otherwise mishandled over the years at the museum. As a result, the pictures were cracked, yellowed, covered with dirt and soot, and severely unstable. Today, the paintings' original bright and vivid colors are revealed once more. The museum, at 54 Pearl St., is open weekdays, 12 to 5 p.m. and weekends, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is well worth a visit.