U.S. FRIGATE Constitution, of 44 GUNS.
Many different commercial prints of USS Constitution were made available to the public in the wake of the ship’s victories during the War of 1812. This popular engraving is among those prints, and is notable for its detailed and accurate depiction of the ship’s rigging. Artist William Lynn produced the original drawing, which was then engraved for reproduction by Abel Bowen around 1812. Bowen was a well-known engraver whose Boston shop printed and sold copies of the artwork. The prints were hand-colored, resulting in seemingly random differentiations in color among the various copies still in existence. For example, the bright red coloring on the ship’s lower stays shown in this 1973 reprint are not a true representation of the actual ship.
Creator
William Lynn (artist), Abel Bowen (engraver)
Date Created
1973
Medium
Paper, Ink
Dimensions
[H]25 1/2 in. [W]30 1/2 in. [D]1 in.
Catalog Number
546.1
Credit Line
USS Constitution Museum Collection. Mr. John B. Dodge Gift.
Terms of Use
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
