The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776

The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776

Franz Xavier Habermann

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, a pro-revolutionary group known as the New York Sons of Liberty tore down a statue of George III standing at Broadway and Bowling Green. This imaginative recreation of that event correctly shows enslaved and free Black men performing most of the labor, but dresses them in fanciful Turkish attire—a costume often worn by Black men in European art that refers to the legality of slavery in the Ottoman Empire. The Baroque architecture is more characteristic of a large European city from that era than Anglo-Dutch colonial New York, and the actual statue showed the king on horseback. Published in Paris, but based on a print issued slightly before in Augsburg and demonstrates broad European interest in the dramatic events taking place across the Atlantic. It was intended to be shown on a wall or screen using a "magic lantern", an optical device that projected the image by means of candles and mirrors, and often called a "Vue d'Optique.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.