The year 2026 marks an important moment in the history of the United States—the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Many semi-quincentennial events will take place across the country and throughout the Philadelphia region in the coming year.
Brandywine Museum of Art is planning an exhibition in honor of the anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine, which was fought in Chadds Ford on September 11, 1777. Drawn from the Brandywine and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art collections, the works on display will range from illustrations and portraits to the Wyeth family’s representations of the historic event.
The works on view in the exhibition show a range of participants in the war, from famed figures like George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and Baron von Steuben to the common people of the era—men and women, loyalists and patriots. Howard Pyle’s summer school of illustration, active in the early twentieth century and where he taught his students such as Violet Oakley, Frank Schoonover, and N.C. Wyeth, was located on part of the site where the Battle of the Brandywine was fought. In turn later artists including Andrew Wyeth, Barclay Rubincam, and Horace Pippin painted Battlefield reflections. Though the Battle of Brandywine may have been an ill-fated event in the years-long war, the exhibition will pay tribute to the national importance of our shared local history.