An exhibition offering a distinctly British perspective on the birth of the United States opens at Hogarth’s House in Chiswick, west London, on 22 September 2026, marking the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. Entitled How We Lost America, the display runs until 1 November before touring to Boston Manor House in Brentford later in the year.

The exhibition, presented by Aurora Metro Arts & Media, draws on satire, contemporary newspapers and little-known personal letters to examine how ideas of liberty and equality that underpinned American independence reverberated far beyond the colonies. A series of large-format banners explores how those founding principles set a democratic precedent for the wider world — and poses pointed questions about how they continue to be interpreted, contested and, at times, distorted today.

Among the lesser-told stories featured are those of female revolutionaries and enslaved soldiers, figures whose roles in the independence struggle have frequently been overlooked in mainstream historical narratives on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Hogarth Connection

The choice of Hogarth’s House as a venue is more than incidental. William Hogarth — the eighteenth-century painter and printmaker celebrated for his biting social satire — died in 1764, more than a decade before the Declaration of Independence was signed, and never visited America. Yet recent academic research has shed new light on just how widely his prints and aesthetic ideas circulated among British-American merchants and statesmen in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. London newspapers and engraved prints, including Hogarth’s work, were regularly imported into the colonies, where they were displayed and debated in coffeehouses and print shops — precisely the environments in which revolutionary sentiment took hold.

Hogarth never commented directly on the question of American independence, but his sharply satirical series and portraiture shaped the visual language of political protest and influenced the American artists who went on to depict Revolutionary leaders. His work, the exhibition argues, contributed to a transatlantic visual culture that helped give form to the ideas of the age.

One of the most striking connections centres on John Wilkes, the journalist and political radical whom Hogarth portrayed in one of his most unflattering caricatures. Wilkes was an outspoken supporter of the American Patriots and was admired by colonists as a champion of liberty. Hogarth’s hostile caricature, intended as an attack, had the opposite effect: rather than diminishing Wilkes, it elevated him in the eyes of the colonists, who took the portrait as evidence of his anti-monarchical defiance. The feud between two of the era’s most prominent figures thus became, unintentionally, a piece of revolutionary propaganda.

Talks, a Book Launch and a National Tour

Alongside the display, a programme of talks by historians and a launch event for the accompanying book How We Lost America will take place during the exhibition’s run. Full details of events are available at aurorametro.org.uk/how-we-lost-america-events.

Following its Chiswick run, the exhibition moves to Boston Manor House in Brentford in November and December 2026. Boston Manor House is itself a historic Jacobean mansion with links to the area’s long mercantile and civic heritage, making it a fitting second home for a display about trade, politics and transatlantic relations.

Aurora Metro Arts & Media, the not-for-profit arts and education organisation behind the project, was established in the 1990s and has delivered a broad range of arts and media initiatives — spanning film, theatre, exhibitions, workshops and publishing — in and around London. The organisation’s work focuses on championing diversity and equality through creative projects.

The exhibition has been made possible with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Hogarth’s House, managed by Hounslow Council, operates as a historic house museum, contemporary gallery and learning centre, and remains one of the few surviving homes associated with a major figure of eighteenth-century British art.