Editor's note: The following text was reprintedin Resource Library on July 3, 2009 with permission of The ClevelandMuseum of Art. If you have questions or comments regarding the text, pleasecontact The Cleveland Museum of Art through this phone number or Web site
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Throughout these decades of men traveling abroad in pursuitof skills worthy of great artists, Archibald Willard stayed in Cleveland,riding to some extent on the wave of income and reputation created around1876, the year that he painted several versions of the most famous conceptionin the history of Cleveland art -- The Spirit of '76, first calledYankee Doodle. Decades later, he recalled: "[T]he original canvaswas the regulation chromo size, and then, as I became ambitious to be representedat the Centennial, a large painting was made and sent to Philadelphia."[54] If that describes the canvas now in Marblehead,Massachusetts, then the centennial painting was ten feet high and eightfeet wide.[55] As large as life,the painting attested to the magnitude of its creator's ambitions. Willardcame to make many replicas of this pictorial success, the last begun in1912 (fig. 40) in response to a commission from Cleveland City Hall. Willard'sreminiscences about the initial development of his design suggest that hecame to believe in the inspired nature of his conception over the yearsthat he continued to recall its origin. Just thinking about The Spiritof '76 elevated his opinion of himself as an artist.[56] Yet such lofty beliefs make strange bedfellows with the commercialimpulses that both motivated Willard to realize his ideas and fueled theprocesses by which people consumed the resulting imagery. From this perspective,the man who brought Willard to Cleveland, James F. Ryder, was a key playerin the events of 1876.[57] 2ff7e9595c
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