Antique Prints of Boston in the American Revolution

Donald H. Cresswell
All illustrations from the Library of Congress

The able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught. The London Magazine, vol. 43 (May 1, 1774), p. 184.

Political prints and caricatures were the Op Ed pages of their day. In his Life of Johnson (1791), Boswell tells how he and the famous doctor would walk out of their way in London to pass the windows of print shops, where they could keep up with world events and local gossip. Perhaps they enjoyed the caricatures in particular, for caricatures presented the events they depicted through a sharp, satirical and witty lens. At a time when access to newspapers was limited, pictures could inform large numbers of people and help shape their opinions. Though these prints are now scarce, they were issued in multiples and would have had a strong impact in their day due to repetitive exposure.
Thus in April of 1774 The London Magazine printed a caricature The able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught. It was as insightful as it was scurrilous. America was represented as a lovely Indian maid being violated by leading English ministers: Lord North, with the “Boston Port Bill” in his pocket, forcefully pours tea down her throat while Chief Justice Mansfield holds her down, and Lord Sandwich, a notorious womanizer, peers up her skirt. Lord Bute, his sword inscribed “Military Law,” looks on while Britannia holds her eyes, turns away, and weeps. There’s a torn petition from Boston discarded in the foreground, and the background shows “Boston cannonaded.” The international repercussion is shown with figures representing France and Spain gleefully anticipating trouble for the British Empire. This simple but telling picture conveyed as much information and acerbic commentary as any Op Ed column today. It was re-engraved and appeared in The Hibernian Magazine in May, and in June Paul Revere engraved another copy for The Royal American Magazine in Boston. We can only imagine its delighted reception by Bostonians in 1774.

Why Boston?
In 1773, citizens of Boston famously dumped shiploads of tea into the city’s harbor rather than pay the excise taxes to Britain. In 1774, the British parliament passed what became known as “The Intolerable Acts” as a lesson to its American colonies in general and Boston in particular (see sidebar). Boston was one of the wealthiest and busiest ports in America with a harbor that was clearly defined and thus relatively easy to control. In other New England ports smuggling was comparatively safe and common, but in Boston the excise men were more effective, and so more hated. Thus, the resistance by articulate leaders and rabble rousing tradesmen was intense. British efforts to control Bostonians and extract customs duties from them became a match game.

In October 1774 a series of elegant mezzotints caricaturing events in Boston were created in London by Philip Dawe, a shadowy resister to Tory policies. In a print titled “The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring and Feathering” the torture of a government tax collector is shown by a mob that has applied hot tar and then feathers to the man’s body, and is now pouring tea down his throat. What was literal in the foreground was symbolic in the background as tea is being poured into the harbor from a ship. For those sympathetic with Tory policies such atrocious actions are reflected in the fallen and discarded liberty cap in the left foreground. Within a three month period, Dawe produced three other full sheet mezzotints showing the violence by Bostonians in their resistance to British taxes.

“Die einwohner von Boston wersen den englisch-ostindischen thee ins meer am 18, December 1773.” D. Chodowiecki inv. et del.; D. Berger sculpsit 1784. Late in the evening of December 16, 1773, a group of Bostonians, disguised as Indians, swarmed onto ships in the harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea overboard (the date is wrong on this German print).

The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering.London: Printed for Robt. Sayer & J. Bennett, Map & Printseller, No. 53, Fleet Street as the Act directs, 1774 Octr. 31 Five Bostonians are forcing a tarred and feathered customs officer to drink from a teapot; a bucket and a liberty cap are on the ground at his feet. They stand beneath the 'Liberty Tree' from which a noose hangs, and a sign reading 'Stamp Act' hangs upside down. In the background, shadowy figures dump tea overboard.

Contemplez l'ouvrage de pouvoir arbitraire, (Think of the work of arbitrary power) Le Barbier L'aine inv. Del. Patas sculp, 1781. An imaginary depiction of the eulogy at the funeral of Dr. Joseph Warren by Nelson, who shows the body to his countrymen.

Europe weighs in
Prints showing revolutionary activities in Boston were not restricted to the English-speaking antagonists. In Berlin in 1784, Daniel Chodowiecki, known as “the German Hogarth” for his genre scenes of European events, contributed an engraved picture of the Boston Tea Party, along with other views of events in America, to a history book titled Allgemeines Historisches Taschenbuch. His imaginative drawing of the event shows two African Americans placidly watching tea being thrown into the waters while white Bostonians observe grimly, and one throws up his hands in excitement.

In France, a print of the eulogy at the funeral of the famous revolutionary Dr. Joseph Warren was sympathetic to the American cause and emotional in the best tradition of Jean Jacque Rousseau and neoclassicism. Warren was the most prominent citizen and highest ranking officer at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and this emotional rendering of his funeral accompanied Hilliard d’Auberteuil’s Essais historiques (Paris, 1781-82).

During the years of revolution in America a surprising number of views of American cities and landscapes appeared in America and Europe. A large number of fictional or imaginative views were published in a format called “vues d’optique” on the continent and “rare show prints” in England and the American colonies. A “Vue de Boston” (Plate 5) by Francois Xavier Habermann was one of many of that city, as well as Philadelphia, New York, Salem, and Quebec, produced in Augsburg to be used with optical viewing machines. The prints were viewed through a lens in a box or tent which allowed a prism to illuminate them as well as enlarge them. In this view of Boston, which resembles Dresden or other cities with baroque architecture, it is no accident that a cannon is being hauled through the main street. Some of these views had no reference to revolution, but others showed troops marching in the streets. The titles of these prints were printed in reverse along the top so that the line would appear correctly when the lens reversed it, and the legends at the bottom were usually in more than one language so that the prints could be distributed internationally. This type of print was published in France, Holland, England and Germany, although German publishers seem to have been the most prolific.

Military and naval prints
Coexisting with the “imaginative” views were many accurate views that were demanded by an art-buying public during this “Age of Reason.” When officers of the British Army drew landscapes, they often stated, “Drawn on the spot by . . .” as an assurance to the audience that it was a true picture by an artist who had actually observed the scene. Other landscapes were produced in the interests of sailing safety. These coastal profiles or scenes often accompanied sea charts. They were drawn to give mariners a sense of where they were heading as they approached land. Some were rudimentary profiles, but many were works of art in their own right. The scenes around Boston that were published by the Swiss engineer Joseph DesBarres for the British Admiralty are among such views. His “Boston from Willis Creek” was drawn by William Pierre and published in September of 1775 as part of DesBarres’ atlas The Atlantic Neptune. This view is quite scarce today. The artist received no more than his soldier’s pay for his work, but it is a fine drawing that is indicative of Pierre’s future as a major marine painter.

The more rudimentary end of the aesthetic spectrum can be seen in another profile on a map. Bernard Romans, an American, drew a map titled “Plan of Boston and Its Environs 1775” that was printed by Nicolas Brooks (the patriot printer Robert Aitkin was probably also involved) in Philadelphia. Published to inform the citizenry about events in and around Boston, it contains a small panorama that shows “A View of the Lines thrown upon Boston Neck by the Ministerial Army.” Containing seven references and the aesthetics of a military scout’s hasty sketch, it is a gripping document of how the King’s army was choking Boston literally by the thin neck that separated the city from the mainland.

While many prints and drawings were made in the years of the American Revolution, they are almost all very scarce due to the difficulty of making engravings and woodcuts at that time. Some were destroyed soon after publication because possession could lead to charges of treason. But there are some allegorical representations of the war that escape one’s attention unless the allegory is read beyond the literal picture. On a French map of Boston Harbor by Jean de Beaurain (fils) there is a title cartouche which shows two men fighting for a banner. An English soldier wields a pike with a standard decorated by a lion rampant. He grasps the American’s pike which has a pine tree emblem and a liberty cap mounted on his staff of stability. Behind the American is a bundle of fasces, the symbol of justice since the Romans, a plow representing agriculture, and an anchor representing commerce, all of which he is protecting. The cartouche is clearly sympathetic to the American cause, and includes a terrified noble savage to the left of the composition. Unintentionally, the French artist-cartographer has implied that the real loser of the American Revolution was the American Indian.

Donald H. Cresswell is a proprietor of The Philadelphia Print Shop, Ltd. 8441 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118, (215) 242-4750, cresswell@philaprintshop.com, www.philaprintshop.com.