Knox's Noble Train of Artillery

In November 1775 the American army besieging Boston had plenty of men and almost no heavy guns. Henry Knox, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller who had learned his artillery from the military books he sold, offered to fetch some from Fort Ticonderoga, about 300 miles away.

He reached the fort on December 5 and chose 59 pieces, about 60 tons of iron and brass. Boats carried them down Lake George. Then 42 sleds pulled by oxen and horses took them through Albany, across the frozen Hudson four times and over the Berkshires. Each team leader carried an axe, ready to cut the lines if a gun broke through the ice.

On December 17 Knox wrote Washington that he hoped soon to present "a noble train of artillery." The guns reached Cambridge in late January 1776. On the night of March 4 they went up onto Dorchester Heights above the harbor, and on March 17 the British evacuated Boston.

The painting finds the train strung out along a snowy hillside in low winter sun. A mounted officer in a cocked hat and dark cloak rides beside a sled carrying a long gun, while oxen lean into the yoke and men haul on ropes. Behind them the column winds back toward a frozen river.