Maryland Heights: Siege of Harpers Ferry

William MacLeod

National Gallery of Art

This horizontal landscape painting shows a panoramic view of a river valley and an encampment from an elevated vantage point. The horizon runs about halfway up the composition beneath a wide expanse of pale blue sky dotted with a few puffy white clouds. A rocky bluff runs along the bottom edge of the canvas, closest to us. Three people in uniforms of dark blue jackets and lighter blue pants sit or stand among the sparce trees and shrubs there. One faces away from us, one sits on a boulder and smokes a pipe, and one gestures across the river. On a flat surface a bit farther down and to the right, more people stand among six white tents. Some tend to two cannons aimed across the river, which creates a hairpin turn in the lower left corner of the composition. The wide river feeds the turn to the right and the waterway continues to the horizon to the left. What first appears to be gentle rapids on the river could be two canoes rowed by several people each. On the far side of the river are a town with buildings set loosely within a block and a road traveling into the distance, which is also lined with houses and buildings. To the right of this are a few clusters of white tents leading back to rows of countless white tents on a gently rolling hill in the distance. The tents and hills become hazy as they approach the horizon. Two piles of cream-white clouds drift across the pale blue sky above.