At sixteen, Alfred Howland wrote to his older brother with tangible excitement, “Next Tuesday I suppose you know will be the 4th of July. How I long for it.” The annual parade in his native Walpole, New Hampshire, became the subject of his most famous painting, exhibited at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. Howland painted this smaller version as a finished study. Set in the days of his youth, it shows a motley crew of marchers—some dressed in Revolutionary War uniforms—and suggests a tinge of nostalgia.