Peace

The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783 by representatives of Great Britain and the United States, formally recognized American independence. In this haunting image, now known only through a black-and-white reproduction, three abandoned cannons—one foregrounded in a central rocky setting, the other two seen at left and right on a distant horizon—capture the tenuousness of peace with Britain. Only a few flowers and tall grass, plaintive symbols of hope, are growing in the war-scarred landscape. Within a generation, ongoing conflicts with the Crown would escalate into the War of 1812, America’s final revolt against British rule and a later subject for Lawrence in the Struggle series.