[Paul Revere, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right]

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Paul Revere is shown here in a head-and-shoulders portrait turned toward the right, a format that printmakers used often when they wanted a figure to look dignified and easily recognized. The record does not give a date for the lithograph, so the exact year of its making is unknown. Revere himself was a Boston silversmith who rode out on the night of April 18, 1775, to warn colonial militia that British troops were marching toward Concord, and his fame grew well after his death in 1818. Portraits like this one were often produced decades later, when Americans wanted images of the men who had shaped the Revolution.

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