Lot 1155: John C. McRae (fl. 1850-1880) after Johannes A. Oertel (1823-1909) Fine American and European Furniture, Silver, Folk and Decorative Arts and Clocks

Pulling Down the Statue of George III, By the "Sons of Freedon" at the Bowling Green, City of New York; July 1776, 1859 Colored engraving Published by John C. McRae, Broadway, New York 20 x 30 3/8in (50.8 x 77.2 cm)

50.8 x 77.2 cm

George Washington read the Declaration of Independence to his troops and New York citizens on July 9, 1776. The next evening, the "Sons of Liberty" destroyed the statue of British King George III, an act depicted in the romanticized painting by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel. The nationalism inherent in the destruction of the statue was of great interest to pre-Civil War artists, who depicted patriotic events crucial to the eighteenth-century establishment of the Union as encouragement for mid-nineteenth-century efforts to save it. Oertel was born in Bavaria and studied engraving in Munich. In 1848, he settled in Newark, New Jersey, where he painted portraits and engraved banknotes. In the middle of the nineteenth century, John McRae was an active engraver of portraits and historical scenes.