Slag bij Lexington, Massachusetts 1783

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki created this print titled 'Slag bij Lexington, Massachusetts'. Born in Poland and later working in Berlin, Chodowiecki never actually witnessed the American Revolution. Instead, his visualization emerges from second-hand accounts, filtered through his own cultural and political context as a central European intellectual during the Enlightenment. The print depicts the skirmish at Lexington, often considered the start of the American Revolutionary War. Here, we see the artist attempting to capture a distant and complex event. The artist's rendering may lean into established European conventions for depicting conflict, rather than fully grasping the nuances of the American experience. As you consider the image, how might the artist’s geographical and cultural distance shape his representation of this pivotal moment in American history?