- Title: Frances Marion
- Author: Johnson, Fry & Co.
- Date: c.1861
- Condition: A crisp steel engraving on a very clean sheet. Superb.
- Inches: 8 1/4 x 10 3/4 [Paper]
- Centimeters: 20.95 x 27.30 [Paper]
- Product ID: 308726
The Patriot
Steel-engraved portrait from National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans, after a painting by Alonzo Chappel. A fine steel engraving printed on wove paper, issued as part of Johnson, Fry & Co.’s ambitious patriotic series celebrating notable figures in the nation’s political and cultural history.
Francis Marion (c. 1732–1795), known as the “Swamp Fox,” was a celebrated Revolutionary War officer from South Carolina whose daring guerrilla campaigns against British forces made him a legendary figure in early American memory. Of Huguenot descent and long associated with the lowcountry plantations and swamps of the Santee and Pee Dee regions, Marion commanded small, highly mobile bands of militia, striking supply lines and outposts before vanishing into difficult terrain, a style of irregular warfare that later biographers and artists romanticized as a uniquely American form of military ingenuity.
A fine representation celebrating Marion’s fame, depicted on horseback in dramatic woodland scenes. From the National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Amtheericans, where his image stood alongside other Revolutionary heroes as part of a visual canon of national founders. The enduring appeal of these images lies in their blend of history and myth: they present Marion not only as an effective partisan commander, but as a symbol of tenacity, tactical ingenuity, and backcountry resilience in the struggle for American independence.
Marion’s exploits inspired the fictional Benjamin Martin in the 2000 film The Patriot, although Mel Gibson’s character is a composite rather than a direct portrait.