Liberty caps and liberty trees

Past & Present, Feb, 1995 by J. David Harden

These tourists were hardly the only visitors to America. A far more influential group of Frenchmen - influential, that is, for our purposes - also trod on American soil. A number of French artists, cartoonists and caricaturists had emigrated to the colonies before and during the Revolutionary period.(50) Their influence remains conjectural, but we can at least suggest the possibility, although it is difficult to determine the direction of transmission in every instance. In France, Niquet's well-known engraving, "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen", depicts the "natural" demise of the ancien regime. (Plate 2.) Lightning and thunderstorms crush feudalism under their weight, while the benevolence of the sun shines upon the celebrants of the Declaration of Rights. These celebrants dance merrily about a maypole topped by the bonnet de la liberte. In another image, attributed to Corbut (c. 1778),(51) France, portrayed as an avenging angel, drives a panic-stricken British army from Philadelphia. (Plate 3.) The original inscription "asks us to note the frivolous Americans rejoicing in the 'Golden Age' round a liberty pole adorned with a liberty bonnet . . .".(52) The similarity between the American and French celebrants dancing gaily around the maypoles in these images is striking. Clearly, these depictions are informed by similar traditions. Even more remarkably, the entire image of the avenging angel made the Atlantic crossing. A virtually identical engraving, dated 19 June 1791, engraved at Versailles and signed, with a humorous flair, "par Sans souci", renames the participants to describe the angel of liberty chasing the king's forces out of Paris. (Plate 4.) Philadelphia has become the Bastille, the angel's shield bears a patriotic inscription instead of a Medusa's head and the flag near the maypole bears not stripes but the fleur de lis; still, the general pattern of the images is the same. Ironically, the plagiarized image is described in the inscription as having been designed "apres nature".

There is one more important clue concerning this transatlantic symbolic exchange. In 1783, Augustin Dupre, who would become the chief engraver to the Republic in 1791, struck a medal to honour the establishment of the new American Republic. (Plate 5.) The medallion represents, on one side, the goddess Liberty bareheaded with the pileus on a pole behind her; the motto reads "LIBERTAS AMERICANA 4 JUIL 1776". This date has been a source for confusion among many commentators who, apparently having seen only this side, assume 1776 to be the date of minting.(53) The reverse, however, shows Pallas Athena, holding a shield bearing the fleur de lis, defending the infant American republic (a baby Hercules) against an attacking leopard; in exergue are the dates, "17/19 OCT 1777/1781". On these days, Burgoyne and Cornwallis had surrendered to American forces at Saratoga and Yorktown.(54) According to Emile Male, this image unites the two attributes accorded to liberty by Cesare Ripa.(55) Albeit indirectly, this is a reasonable hypothesis, but the immediate source for the iconography seems to have been Benjamin Franklin, the new American Republic's ambassador to France. We know that Franklin and Dupre became friends after meeting coincidentally during their morning walks along the quays of the Seine. Their shared constitutionals seem to have given rise to a business proposition.(56) In March 1782 Franklin wrote to a friend: