Lexington Battle Monument

Executed in oil on canvas, the painting employs saturated greens, blues, and whites punctuated by touches of red and yellow. The artist uses flat, stylized forms with minimal modeling, smooth brushwork, and no deep shadows, yielding an even, decorative effect across the horizontal landscape. The composition is structured around contrasting vertical and horizontal elements, positioning the central obelisk between two full green trees, while white picket and wooden fences stretch across the middle and foreground. The canvas surface exhibits visible crackling throughout. The work remains unsigned.

The work is recorded as originating from Massachusetts. Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch purchased the painting in 1948 and subsequently donated it to the National Gallery of Art in 1953. Following its accession, the painting was featured in early exhibitions of the Garbisch collection in 1954 and 1955. It later served on extended loan to various government offices, including the U.S. Department of Justice from 1961 to 1973, the U.S. Embassy in Brunei from 1990 to 1991, the U.S. Department of Energy from 1999 to 2001, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 2007 and 2008. It was also loaned to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts from 1976 to 1982, exhibited at the Terra Museum of American Art in 1985, and included in a major international exhibition on archaic innocence in Venice and Paris from 2015 to 2017.

The painting is catalogued within the American naive painting tradition, a classification supported by its inclusion in the National Gallery of Art's systematic catalogue of American Naive Paintings and its appearance in the 1985 exhibition Two Centuries of Naive Painting at the Terra Museum of American Art. Its flat stylization, decorative palette, and lack of academic perspective align with folk art practices of the era. The work's later inclusion in the 2015 to 2017 exhibition Le Douanier Rousseau: L'innocence archaique in Venice and Paris further contextualizes it within broader art historical examinations of archaic and self-taught artistic traditions, drawing parallels between American naive painting and European primitives.