Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an engraver and silversmith who lived from 1734 to 1818. History mostly remembers Paul Revere as the early American Patriot who alerted the Americans that the British troops were coming just before the battle of Lexington and Concord. It turns out he was an accomplished artist as well. Besides being an exceptional silversmith, he produced many politically charged engravings.
Paul Revere was born in Boston to a French immigrant family. He was the third of 12 children, and as an adult was the oldest surviving son. His father was a silversmith and at age 13, Revere started an apprenticeship with his father. When Revere was 19, his father died. Unfortunately, Revere was too young to officially take over the family silversmith shop so, for consistent pay, he enlisted in the provincial army during the French and Indian War. Once he came of age at 21, Revere left the armed service and moved back to Boston to formally take over his father’s shop. He then married Sarah Orne and the two had eight children together, though only one lived past him.
After the French and Indian War, the colonies went through a recession and soon after, the Stamp Act of 1765 was enacted. Both factors hurt Revere’s family business and he had to take up dentistry to make ends meet and is one of the main reasons that Revere became a Patriot and decided to support the American Revolution.
Revere became famous for this “midnight ride” in 1775 in which he was sent north to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock about the advancement of the British troops. He alerted as many people as he could along the way but got captured by the British (and eventually set free) en route from Lexington to Concord. Revere’s ride became immortalized in the 1863 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”.
After the war, Revere expanded his business and opened a foundry to work with a variety of metals. This larger operation created a need for higher standardization which was novel at the time, at this was just prior to the height of the industrial revolution. Paul Revere retired in 1811 at 77 years of age and died at the ripe old age of 83.
Back to the Artists page.
You can learn about different art movements here.
