'Our Flag' at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Saget recalls, "When Tom Connelly looked at the pictures and talked about the flags, that told me a whole other story. The history of how the flag changes is fascinating. For example, the very earliest flags did not have stars on them at all; they were variations of the Union Jack or British ensign."

One flag of this type that will be on loan to the exhibition - sold by Connelly to a fellow collector - is the extremely rare Grand Union Flag. Made before the Revolutionary War, the flag has 13 red and white stripes for the 13 colonies with a Union Jack on the upper left hand field. If the war had turned out differently, some version of this might have continued as America's colonial ensign.

Connelly comments, "When there was a time of peace and harmony, people didn't care about the flag. The academy wanted a flag to complement a painting from 1841 when the flag had 26 stars. Now, a 26-star flag is very hard to find; it was a flag for about eight years when there were no wars going on and people weren't very patriotic."

Another point, emphasized by both Connelly and Saget, is the immense variety among the hand-sewn flags of the Nineteenth Century, before the form of the flag was completely standardized in the early 1900s. Connelly explains, "The first congressional resolution basically described what the flag was - the 13 alternating red and white stripes with a blue field with white stars to represent a new constellation. It didn't define how many points the stars would have or how they would be organized. It didn't say whether the blue canton would be small or large. On one famous flag, the whole flag is blue with white stars on it and the red and white stripes were where we now have the blue field."

The collector continues, "When more states started coming in, people didn't know what to do, so they started adding stars and stripes for each state, so you would have 14 or 15 stripes as well as stars. So the second flag resolution limited the stripes to 13 to honor the 13 original states; everyone else can put a star in the field. And we can't be making new flags all year long, so - however many states came in during the year - July 4 will be the official anniversary date.

"They had different versions of the flag coming out of their ears, so around 1908 they set the official dimensions and standardized the stars at five points," says Connelly regretfully. "They took the fun out of the artwork and made it into an official flag. Before that time, you could do anything you wanted - there weren't any flag police." Connelly loves the artistic variations in early flags - that is what makes flag collecting fun - yet disapproves of painters using their own artistic license to create an unlikely flag variant for a particular composition.

As he puts it, "I'm not up for accuracy. Quite frankly, I like to collect the 'artwork' aspect of the flag, so I like the ones where the artist who made the flag has taken liberties, such as putting the stars in an unusual pattern. I think it's American artwork at its best. So I might point out that an artist is doing things all wrong, but I like to collect unusual flags."

The 1841 painting mentioned above, James Clonney's "Militia Training," is an excellent example of the type of fantasy flag that upsets Connelly. The flag flying at the back right has 31 stars rather than the 26 appropriate to that year, and those stars are arranged in a pretty but strange geometric pattern. The stripes - 17 rather than 13 - begin and end with white rather than the conventional red for a better contrast with the dark background.

The collector points out, "It's artistic license but he probably didn't take artistic license with the trees, buildings and human faces. Artistic license is one thing, being careless is another. So the artist was saying, 'I'm just doing what I think is nice looking.'"

Many of the other paintings in the exhibition date to periods of war, from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War and World Wars to Vietnam.

Charles Willson Peale's "George Washington at Princeton," 1779, and Gilbert Stuart's 1796 "George Washington" use the American flag and shield to strengthen portraits of the first president. Colin Campbell Cooper's "Lower Broadway in Wartime," 1917, and Paulette Van Roekens's "Treat 'Em Rough," 1918, show the American flag flying on city buildings during the patriotic fervor of World War I. Wartime experiences helped to save many early, out-of-date flags, which were preserved in attics with other mementos, rather than being recycled or destroyed.

Saget contrasts the clear-cut patriotism of earlier wars with the more ambiguous feelings toward the flag during the Vietnam era: "The painting called 'Brother James' is by an alumnus of ours, James Brantley [born 1945], who is still very much a working artist. It's a self-portrait of the artist wrapped in the flag. He's a Vietnam vet and he painted it in 1968 just after he returned from the war. It's a very enigmatic image that reflects both nationalistic pride and the controversy surrounding the war."

A companion piece to this painting is another exhibit flag, the Peace Flag, also an ex-Connelly example sold at Sotheby's in 2003. Found on a farm adjacent to the famous Woodstock Festival of 1969, the hand-sewn flag has the canonical 13 stripes with 46 stars arranged in a peace sign on the blue field.

The most recent painting in the exhibition, George Beach's "Indivisible," 2001, has its own story to tell. Born in 1936, Beach trained at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris but was forced to stop painting 25 years ago because of severe rheumatoid arthritis in his hands. New medicines to treat the disease made it possible for him to create "Indivisible" after the tragedy of the 9/11 bombings. The painting features a tattered American flag, fragments of the World Trade Center, and a bright sun symbolizing the indomitable spirit and hope of the American people.

Docent-led tours of "Our Flag" for adults and students will be available during the show's run this year. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is at Broad and Cherry Streets. Founded in 1805, the academy was America's first art museum, as well as a school of fine arts with exhibitions devoted to the works of living artists. For information, 215-972-7600 or .