N.C. Wyeth’s Independence Day

Independence Day (At Concord Bridge), N.C. Wyeth, oil on canvas, 33 x 30 in. (85 x 77 cm), Image is from a Sotheby’s auction in 2021. (Click on the image twice to get the larger version.) Presumably the original is in a privete collection. The great American painter and illustrator N.C. Wyeth, like his teacher and mentor, Howard Pyle, painted a number of paintings of the fledgling years of our republic. He, he shows the Colonial Militia at Concord’s North Bridge, ostensibly on Independence Day, even though the initial battle of the bridge actually occurred more than a year before in april of 1775. But the theme here is the courage and determinaton of those who joined the rebellion against the tyranny of authoritarian rule, the collusion of government and corporate interests and the mandate of a government imposed religion. When a woman later asked of Ben Franklin at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”, Franklin replied “A…