The Battle of Bunker's Hill (June 17, 1775)

The soldier lying wounded at center is Joseph Warren, a Massachusetts physician who had served as second president of Massachusetts's revolutionary Provincial Congress. In 1775 he joined the colonial force that fought the British first at Lexington and Concord, then on Bunker's (or Breed’s) Hill. Even though a commissioned officer, he volunteered to fight as a private soldier. On the heights above Charlestown, across the river from Boston, the American troops repulsed two British attacks before their ammunition ran low and their lines were broken. Warren was struck by a musket or pistol ball during the battle and killed.
Trumbull also belonged to the colonial army and watched this battle through field glasses from a camp at Roxbury. He immortalized the event in 1786 in a painting, now in the University Art Gallery at Yale, which served as the basis for this engraving. After the war, Trumbull traveled to London and studied painting with Benjamin West, then created a series centered on significant American battles. Following the dictates of "history painting," the most elevated genre of thet time, these compositions often describe noble behavior. Here, the death of a young patriot is honored together with the compassion shown by a British major, John Small–the latter had fought with the colonial general Israel Putnam in the French and Indian War and, standing hre at center, prevents another British soldier from bayoneting the fallen Warren. This print was published in London in 1798.