Known as one of the most famous American paintings depicting a battle scene during the American Revolutionary War, is The Spirit of ‘76. Painted by Archibald Willard in 1875. The idea for the painting was conceived when Archibald was watching a small town parade. Two men dancing around ahead of the parade of marchers to the tune of Yankee Doodle had him remembering the soldiers marching into the battlefields. The marching soldiers led by the drummers and a fife player during many of the American Revolutionary War battles. Archibald used his fathers face as the model for the middle drummer, his farmer neighbors’ face for the fife player, and a young local schoolboy for the other drummer. The painting was originally titled, Yankee Doodle by Archibald. It was changed later to “The Spirit Of ’76” because that is what many people were calling it. Variations of The Spirit of ’76 have been used in many forms throughout the years. Its been shown in parades and Reenactments, and also in movies. In the movie, The Great Escape, actors James Garner and Steve McQueen do a version of the painting. To this day the original painting is on display in Abbot Hall in Marblehead, Massachusetts for all to see.
In 1959 Palmer Plastics decided to make a model kit of The Spirit of ’76. The kit sold from ’59 to about the mid 60’s. Sales for the kit were low. Most kits were purchased and built by school children doing history projects for class assignments. The kit consists of styrene plastic parts to make the three figures as seen in the original painting. The kit also comes with a base.
The details of the figures are fine as is, but I thought they needed improvement. Using X-acto knives I carved away some of the plastic around their coats. Additional Squadron putty and some filing and the details were improved to my liking.
One thing I noticed wrong with the model was that the center figure is wearing the wrong style boots for that era. Using Aves 2-part Apoxie Sculpt putty and sanding and filing I corrected this and now that figure has the boots he should be wearing. I also repositioned the arms for each figure. If you were to assemble as is, the figures would not look right holding their instruments and they wouldn’t have looked like the original painting, which was what I was trying to achieve. I made other modifications to the figures also. The wrinkled clothes look was achieved by using Aves 2-part Apoxie Sculpt putty to create the wrinkles. Painting lighter shades of the main color on the top edges of the wrinkles gives the cloths a worn look. After all the modifications were done the three figures now match the original painting more closely.
This Palmer kit supplies blue color thread. You are to use this thread as the drum straps according to the instructions. But on the original painting it shows flat wide straps. So using lead strips I made drum straps to match the painting. The drumsticks and the flute were out of scale with the figures and they were mere pieces of plastic rods. They didn’t look at all like what they should be. So I made new drumsticks out of wood and the flute was made from plastic sprue. For the paint on this kit I used Testers enamels, air brushed and a lot of dry brushing. The finished kit with all the corrections looks great. I would give this model a rating of 8 or 9. If built out of box as is it would have to be rated a 4 the most. This is a pretty simple kit by Palmer. But to make it look like the original painting it requires a lot of work. I really enjoyed working on this model. I love building a lot of the old vintage kits. This one was a bit of a challenge but the end result came out great. Have a safe 4th of July
