On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Peace
Jacob Lawrence American
Not on view
The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783 by representatives of Great Britain and the United States, formally recognized American independence. In this haunting image, now known only through a black-and-white reproduction, three abandoned cannons—one foregrounded in a central rocky setting, the other two seen at left and right on a distant horizon—capture the tenuousness of peace with Britain. Only a few flowers and tall grass, plaintive symbols of hope, are growing in the war-scarred landscape. Within a generation, ongoing conflicts with the Crown would escalate into the War of 1812, America’s final revolt against British rule and a later subject for Lawrence in the Struggle series.
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