The Midnight Ride

On the night of April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren sent for Paul Revere with the news Boston had been waiting for: the Regulars were going out that night, by water, toward Lexington and Concord. Revere had already arranged a signal in case he could not get out of the city himself — two lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church meant the troops were crossing the river.

Two friends rowed him across the Charles, close under HMS Somerset, and at Charlestown he borrowed a horse from Deacon John Larkin. He did not shout that the British were coming; the colonists still thought of themselves as British. What he told the houses along the road, by his own account, was that the Regulars were coming out.

He reached Lexington around midnight and woke Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Riding on for Concord with William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott, he was stopped by a British patrol. Prescott jumped a stone wall and carried the warning through. Revere was released without his horse and walked back into Lexington in time to hear the first shots.

The painting catches him mid-ride: a chestnut horse at full stretch on a moonlit road, a brick church behind him with light burning in its belfry. A second rider is far back on the road. The sky is worked in thick, broken strokes of blue around a full moon, and dust comes up where the hooves land. The whole frame leans the way he is going.