The Peaks of Otter and the Town of Liberty
Edward Beyer
1855
Oil on canvas
Virginia Historical Society
Lora Robins Collection of Virginia Art.
Partial gift of Mildred Edmunds Long.

As always with this artist, it is the extraordinary details of the town that engage the viewer. In every inch of this depiction of Liberty–in the trains, the houses and public buildings, the tilled fields, the people at work or play–the viewer finds reason to linger in front of the canvas. Of the inhabitants of Liberty, one traveler probably familiar with William Tell wrote, "They, indeed, are the very princes of freemen; breathing, as they do, the pure breezes of their own blue mountains, and daily learning lessons of liberty and independence from the wild bird that soars in unobstructed flight and proud defiance about the towering summit of the Peaks of Otter."