REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN NEW YORK

“L’Entré triumphale de Troupes royales a Nouvelle Yorck” [The Triumphal Entry of Royal Troops into New York]. Copper engraving attributed to Andre Bassett Paine after Franz Xavier Habermann, from a series of prints at the outset of the American Revolutionary War published around 1776. With original hand colouring. Size: 27,9 × 41 cm.

In the American war of Independence, the strategy of the British in North America was to deploy a combination of operations aimed at capturing major cities and a blockade of the coast. The British took Long Island in August 1776 and captured New York City in September 1776 in combined operations involving the army and the navy during the New York and New Jersey campaign.

In this imaginary view of colonial New York, British troops are marching down the street after retaking the city from American revolutionaries.

Franz Xavier Habermann had not observed the scene, in fact he had never been to New York. (The Augsburg-based engraver’s various views of the city tend, architecturally, to resemble Augsburg.) What Habermann lacked in geographical accuracy, he made up for with pro-royalist sympathy and outrage: the events in the American city inspired alarm and derision among Europeans still wedded to monarchy, and it is in this spirit that the present view was engraved.

Price: Euro 650,-