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In August 1782, Pierre Charles L’Enfant painted West Point, the administrative and strategic center of the Continental Army. Since the spring of 1778, West Point had become the army’s largest post. During that summer, New England troops dug entrenchments on the surrounding hills and built fortifications on Constitution Island, across the river. These buildings and fortifications are visible in L’Enfant’s scene. 

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 

Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s watercolor of the encampment at Verplanck’s Point (August-October 1782) depicts the Continental Army at its professional best. Wooden bowers, or shades made of tree branches, decorated the long line of soldiers’ tents. Washington’s marquee tent stood on a hill where it “towered, predominant” over the camp, as one eyewitness put it.

For a month, the Continental troops at Verplanck’s Point gathered firewood for the coming winter and drilled for the next campaign. On September 22, the Continental Army demonstrated their fighting readiness for French forces marching from Virginia through the Hudson Highlands. One astonished French officer admired the transformation of an army that had “formerly had no other uniform than a cap, on which was written Liberty.” 

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation

Take a closer look at the outlying defenses on the rocky hills and cliffs south of West Point. Notice the Hudson River in the foreground and the Continental Army’s hilltop fortifications. 

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 

Take a closer look at the buildings and parade ground at West Point. Cadets at the United States Military Academy continue to train on the same ground where the Continental Army encamped during the Revolutionary War. 

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 

Take a closer look at the fortifications on both sides of the Hudson River. Notice the S-curve in the Hudson River that made West Point such a strategic location.

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 

Take a closer look at a group of soldiers in the foreground of the painting. Also notice the lines of tents in the distance with the Hudson Highlands in the background. 

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 

Take a closer look at General Washington’s tent perched on a hill overlooking the encampment. Nearby, other tents made up the headquarters of the Continental Army. Charles-Louis-Victor, Prince de Broglie, a colonel in the Saintonge Regiment of the French Army, wrote about seeing Washington’s tent at Verplanck’s Point: “I noticed on a little hill which overlooked the camp...the quarters of General Washington.” 

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation 

Take a closer look at the area where the Continental Army showed its professionalism to the French. The tents of the New York and New Jersey troops are visible here, as well as Stony Point across the Hudson River.

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation 

Take a closer look at the decorated tents of two Connecticut regiments. These tents paralleled a road that led from Verplanck’s Point to Peekskill, New York.

Image: Museum of the American Revolution, Gift of the Landenberger Family Foundation