In Loyalists and Sons of Liberty: America 250, the Yale Center for British Art Displays the Tensions and Rich Pictorial History of America’s Fight for Liberty
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced the thirteen American colonies’ intention to break from the British Empire. The story of the resulting war is often told as a clash between “patriots” who supported independence and “loyalists” who wished to remain British. The reality was far more complicated, with the conflict dividing communities and testing friendships on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
This tension is powerfully illustrated in the Yale Center for British Art’s new display, Loyalists and Sons of Liberty: America 250.
The display, which runs through the end of 2026, features paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures by both British- and American-born artists—including works by Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, and Gilbert Stuart. It is on view in the museum’s fourth-floor galleries, with a complementary display in the YCBA Study Room.
“The Yale Center for British Art is uniquely positioned to offer a distinct perspective on America’s founding,” said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art. “As the largest collection of British art outside the UK, our collection contains deep and often unexpected connections to American history. This display offers an opportunity to explore the birth of the United States through a transatlantic lens, and to illuminate the complicated cultural, political, and economic ties that shaped both Britain and America in this period.”
Loyalists and Sons of Liberty taps into the YCBA’s rich collection to examine America’s battle for independence via the artists who documented the years leading up to and throughout the Revolutionary War. Offering an alternative view of this complex moment in global history, their work portrays the many supporters of the American cause within Britain at the time of the Declaration’s signing. Other works were created to inspire loyalty and express a vision of the colonies’ future as part of the British Empire, in turn shaping the public image of the monarchy and the government.
Among the historical figures featured in the display are British monarchs such as George III and Queen Charlotte and military leaders like General Charles Cornwallis, in addition to lesser-known figures from British and American military and political life. These subjects include abolitionists, enslavers, and both supporters and opponents of the American revolutionaries.
“The complex loyalties and interconnections between these artists and the people they painted challenge the simple categories of patriot and loyalist,” said Edward Town, the YCBA’s Associate Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, who curated the display alongside Pilar Forrest, Postgraduate Research Associate. “These works prompt reflection on how art shapes political identity and public opinion, and why certain histories remain more visible than others.”
In addition to the display, the YCBA in May hosted Thinking Through Tea: Art, Resistance, and Global Entanglements in the Age of American Independence, a symposium presented in conjunction with the Lunder Institute at the Colby College Museum of Art. Marking the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, this program reconsidered American resistance not as a singular political rupture, but as a material and visual process shaped through objects, images, and everyday rituals. | 
