Who painted The Spirit of ’76, the famous patriotic artwork created for America’s 1876 centennial?

Archibald Willard painted The Spirit of ’76, the famous patriotic artwork created for America’s 1876 centennial.

Willard developed the painting in Wellington, Ohio, around 1875 after seeing a holiday parade. It was originally titled Yankee Doodle and was intended partly as a semi-humorous scene, but the death of Willard’s father influenced the work’s more sentimental tone.

The painting shows three figures marching during the American Revolutionary War: an older drummer, a young fifer, and a wounded soldier. It became widely known after being exhibited and reproduced as a chromolithograph around the time of the Centennial Exposition.

The original painting is displayed at Abbot Hall in Marblehead, Massachusetts. It is often confused with Revolutionary-era artwork because its imagery depicts the war, but the painting itself was created nearly a century later.