The Destruction of the Royal Statue at New York on July 9, 1776
Engraver Anonymous, French, 18th century French
After Franz Xavier Habermann German
Publisher Basset French
Not on view
On July 9, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was read to American troops commanded by George Washington in New York, a group of revolutionary supporters moved along Broadway to Bowling Green and tore down a statue of George III–the metal would later be used to make bullets. This imaginative recreation correctly shows enslaved and free Black men performing most of the labor, but dresses them in fantastic orientalized attire. The Baroque architecture is more characteristic of a large European city than Anglo-Dutch colonial New York, and the statue shows the king on foot rather than on horseback. First published in Augsburg, the image was soon replicated in Paris, demonstrating broad European interest in the dramatic events taking place across the Atlantic. Such prints were known as Perspective Prints, or Vues d'optique in French, and Guckkastenbilder or Perspektivansichten in German. They were intended to be viewed through an optical device called a perspective glass or zograscope that contains a concave lens and a mirror that reversed the image and enhanced its three-dimensionality. Specially designed peepboxes were also made to contain them.
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