The Battle of Bunker Hill--Watching the Fight from Copp's Hill
Winslow Homer, American, 1836 - 1910
1875
Wood engraving
Impression: 9 × 13 5/8 in. (22.9 × 34.6 cm)
Sheet: 10 1/2 × 15 in. (26.7 × 38.1 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Appleton 1792 Memorial Fund
PR.943.90
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
19th century
Object Name
Research Area
On view
Label
This illustration was published in the June 26, 1875, edition of Harper’s Weekly, almost exactly one hundred years after the famous Revolutionary War battle loss. The artist imagines a group of men and women gathered on a rooftop to look at the fight; groups on roofs in the distance do the same. The onlookers appear determined and resolute, as if ready for a long struggle ahead. In the distance appears Boston’s Old North Church, where a lantern was famously hung to warn of British troop movements. This romantic image glorifies the American colonists, steadfast in their commitment against the British. Made just ten years after the end of the Civil War, the image looks back to the Revolution as a moment of political unity.
From the 2025-26 exhibition Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda, curated by Michael W. Hartman (Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art), Haely Chang (Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art), Elizabeth Rice Mattison (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art), Ashley B. Offill (Curator of Collections), and Evonne Fuselier (Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow)
Exhibition History
Lower Jewett Corridor, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 23-March 21, 1976.
Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda, Harteveldt Family Gallery and Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 18, 2025 - August 8, 2026.
Provenance
Cora McDevitt Wilson (1880-1975), The Book & Print Shop, Hanover, New Hampshire; sold to present collection, 1943.
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