Newly Found Painting Shows George Washington's Army Tent

01One late night in May, Philip Mead was looking for historical objects from the American Revolution.

02He noticed a painting being offered for sale on the Internet.

03Suddenly, he felt his heartbeat speeding up.

04Mead is the chief historian at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

05The painting is an unsigned watercolor from 1782.

06It shows the army tent that George Washington had used as his command center during the Revolutionary War.

07And, to Mead, this seemed to be the only known artwork from that period to show this tent.

08The painting is the top exhibit at the museum, which opened in April 2017.

09And, thanks to Mead, the museum now owns the painting, which will be the centerpiece of a show next year.

10Mead said the discovery seemed almost too good to be true.

11I've had this level of excitement only a handful of times in my 30 years of looking for this stuff, he said.

12When Mead saw the tent painting, he immediately emailed the image to Scott Stevenson.

13Stevenson serves as the museum's vice president of collections, exhibitions, and programming.

14He said his heart jumped when he realized what the painting was.

15The next step was to quickly find people willing to donate money to buy the painting, which was up for auction.

16It was to be sold just days after Mead's discovery.

17He and Stevenson were concerned that they might not be the only people to have seen the rare work.

18And, they were not sure the painting was exactly what they'd hoped.

19But, they still followed their plan.

20The painting got only one other bidder.

21And so, the Museum of the American Revolution easily bought the painting for $12,000.

22Then, museum workers studied the picture and confirmed that it shows the Continental Army's fall encampment at Verplank's Point, New York.

23The painter was a French-born engineer, Pierre L'Enfant.

24He served in the Continental Army.

25L'Enfant was wounded at the Siege of Savannah and taken prisoner at the surrender of Charleston, South Carolina.

26When released, he went back to serve with Washington for the rest of the war.

27Years later, he worked on planning the design for Washington, D.C.

28The painting shows hundreds of military tents across the hills of New York's Hudson Valley.

29On the left side is Washington's Field Command Center, including the tent.

30Most artwork about the war was created after it, historians say.

31So, the images didn't necessarily show real events.

32Meade said, Having a painting by L'Enfant is like having a Google Street View look at the Revolutionary War encampment.

33Although L'Enfant did not sign the painting, it is similar to the one he made in 1782 of troops at West Point, New York.

34The family who cared for L'Enfant at the end of his life gave it to the United States Library of Congress.

35The appearance, the dates of both paintings, and the handwriting helped to confirm L'Enfant as the painter.

36Some time in the past, the original tent painting was cut into six pieces of paper and placed into a folder.

37An expert is working to clean the painting and put the pieces back together, so it can be shown as it was meant to.

38It will be the central piece of an exhibit called Among His Troops, Washington's War Tent in a Newly Discovered Watercolor.

39The exhibition will open on January 13, 2018.

40To offer visitors a more complete show, the museum is also borrowing the West Point painting from the Library of Congress.

41I'm Alice Bryant.