page_title: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, N.Y.C. Working decades after the event, the artist depicts an imagined, romanticized image of the scene. The painting shows the Sons of Liberty destroying the statue after the Declaration was read by George Washington to citizens and his troops in New York City on July 9, 1776. In fact the statue was pulled down by slaves acting on the orders of their owners. Despite the presence of Native Americans, women and children, eyewitness accounts place only soldiers, sailors and more of the rougher sorts of civilians at the event. Additionally, historical records indicate the statue depicted King George III of England in ancient Roman garb based on the Renaissance sculpture of a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and not the contemporary 18th clothing depicted in this painting.
context_page_description: Johannes Adam Simon Oertel was a German-American Episcopal clergyman and artist.
context_section_description: After studying art in Germany at Nuremberg and Munich, he practiced engraving until 1848, in which year he came to the United States and taught for a time in Newark, New Jersey. In 1851, he married Julia Adelaide Torrey. They eventually had four children. After his marriage, he engraved plates for bank notes, painted portraits and colored photographs. In 1857 he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design. In 1857 he moved to Madison, New Jersey, where he painted Lament of the Fallen Spirits and Redemption. 
   About this time, he was invited to assist in preparing new decorations for the capitol in Washington. In 1861 he transferred his studio to Westerly, Rhode Island, where he painted Father Time and his Family and The Final Harvest (1862), The Dispensation of the Promise and the Law (containing 150 figures, 1863), Walk to Emmaus, The Walk to Gethsemane, Easter Morning, Magdalen at the Sepulchre, The Rock of Ages, and others (1868).
  His painting Rock of Ages became enormously popular and was reproduced in millions of photographs and chromolithographs for sale both in the United States and England.
caption: Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, New York City, ca. 1859
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