Portrait of Nathanael Greene

Alonzo Chappel's engraved portrait depicts Major General Nathanael Greene, Southern commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Greene stands in military dress—dark coat with epaulettes, light breeches, boots—beside his horse in a landscape setting. The engraving technique, with its fine cross-hatching and tonal gradations, was standard for reproductive prints of the era. Such portraits served historical documentation and popular education, circulating through periodicals and collected volumes. Chappel specialized in Revolutionary War imagery, producing hundreds of historical engravings that shaped nineteenth-century Americans' visual understanding of their national past.