Washington at Dorchester Heights

On 4 July 1806, the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a Boston merchant named Samuel Parkman presented this painting to his town. He had commissioned it from Gilbert Stuart for Faneuil Hall, the market building whose upstairs hall was where Boston held its town meetings. The event it remembers was 30 years old by then. In March 1776 Washington's troops fortified Dorchester Heights in a single night, hauling cannon onto the hills above the harbour, and less than two weeks later the British army sailed out of Boston for good. Washington himself had been dead for more than six years when Stuart painted him here, standing at full length in uniform beside a white horse. Stuart worked on a wooden panel close to 9 feet tall, a size made for a public hall. The picture hung in Faneuil Hall for 70 years. In 1876, the year the Museum of Fine Arts opened its doors, the city deposited it there, and it still belongs to the City of Boston.