Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
Like other Northern states, Pennsylvania had much business to attend to in the weeks and months that followed the end of the Civil War: there were regiments to be dissolved, soldiers to be mustered out, and wounded, widowed and orphaned to be provided for.
In January 1866, Gov. Andrew Curtin added another item: a painting. Not just any painting, but a "historical painting" of the Battle of Gettysburg, which the governor thought the state legislature "would be well" to commission and place in the state capital in Harrisburg.
The commonwealth was not alone in its desire to memorialize. Every state was busy erecting monuments. But the events which transpired on that "Pennsylvania field" two and a half years earlier added a sense of urgency, and of obligation. Other loyal Union states had provided troops and munitions; Pennsylvania had supplied a battlefield, the bloodiest of the war, and to many, its turning point. In Curtin's soaring rhetoric, Gettysburg would forever mark the point at which "the rebellion staggered backward into its grave."
To Curtin and other state leaders, the epic nature of the battle called for a depiction of comparable scale and magnificence. Though it did not identify a particular subject, the legislative committee appointed to oversee the commission specified that the work be "a Landscape View, with Battle Scene in large figures" and "of a size not less than thirty feet in length and fifteen feet in height." (The main commission came in at a whopping 32' x 16'.)
Accuracy would be important: the scene (or scenes) depicted needed to be "as far as practicable, historically true." But it was also expected that it be, in the words of one state senator, a "work of high art, worthy of a great occasion, memorable for all time to come."
The publicly commissioned artwork would also need to valorize the "tens of thousands of our gallant [Pennsylvania] soldiers" and "heroic commanders" who had distinguished themselves over the course of the three-day battle. Some 70 Commonwealth regiments had contributed to the Union defense there, along with a host of prominent Pennsylvania-born commanders, from Gen. George Meade, the leader of Union forces at Gettysburg, to field generals like Winfield Hancock, John Reynolds (killed on the first day of battle), Samuel Crawford and John White Geary. Meade and Hancock subsequently offered their services to the committee, although it was difficult to know whether they had done so on behalf of historical accuracy or their own legacies.
In July 1866, Curtin's committee announced that it had awarded a $25,000 contract to Peter F. Rothermel. A well-established genre painter and a native son with strong ties to Philadelphia's influential art world, Rothermel seemed a perfect fit for the job. The artist's grand manner of history painting was no longer particularly in fashion, but its conventions and emphasis on theatricality and story telling seemed well suited to transmitting "the larger meaning of the battle," in the word of the historian Edward Coddington.
Rothermel spent the better part of the next three years immersing himself in the available sources. He visited the battlefield on multiple occasions to make sketches and diagrams, spent hours poring over maps and official reports, and corresponded with dozens of battlefield veterans regarding virtually every aspect of the battle, from troop movements to clothing worn. Back in his studio, he sketched details from actual battlefield artifacts and asked participants, both officers and rank-and-file soldiers alike, to sit for studies.
But the complexity of the battle tested Rothermel's compositional skills and strained his ability to compress so much action onto a single (albeit oversize) canvas. The "Pennsylvania field" was not one but several, ranging over 6,000 acres, encompassing a series of engagements and involving tens of thousands of men during three long days of vicious combat. "Who could sketch the changes, the constant shifting of the bloody panorama," opined one Gettysburg veteran, as if in sympathy for Rothermel's task. "It is not possible."
Even after settling on Pickett's Charge as the dramatic focus of his main painting, Rothermel struggled to discern who was where, and when. The artist's richest source of information – the firsthand accounts supplied by the combatants – proved his most frustrating. For every painstakingly detailed account, Rothermel encountered others that merely added to the confusion.
In attempting to depict the moment at which the Union commander was informed of the successful repulse of Confederate troops at the Angle – the stone wall that separated Union forces from Pickett's men – Rothermel came up against the accounts of two officers, each of whom claimed to be the one who had conveyed the news of the successful Confederate repulse to General Meade. The Union commander had warned Rothermel of as much. "In the excitement of battle, no individual's memory unsupported by corroborative evidence is to be relied on, however honest or truthful the individual may be."
Although both offered equally convincing, detailed testimony, Rothermel chose to recognize (and subsequently depict) the story of Lt. Frank A. Haskell, primarily because it concurred with Meade's recollections.
Even when Rothermel had arrived safely at the truth, political and compositional requirements forced him to bend and stretch. General Meade admitted to not being on the field at the moment depicted in the painting, but Rothermel chose to paint him into the scene anyway. From the artist's perspective, a painting without the "hero of Gettysburg" – and Pennsylvania's native son – would have been incomplete. He expected he would be forgiven for compressing time as well as space to include Meade in the left margin.
Rothermel felt less inclined to extend artistic license to John Geary. By all accounts, the commander of the White Star Division served admirably on the third day of the battle, albeit from the vantage point of Culp's Hill, defending the Union's right flank. But that fact did little to diminish Geary's expectations of finding a place on Rothermel's main canvas. To make matters more precarious for Rothermel, Geary was now governor, the first of four Civil War generals to assume the state's highest office in the decades immediately following the war.
When it became apparent that he had been omitted from the main canvas, Geary fumed. "He reports himself as having saved the day, and carried the stars and stripes triumphant over that bloody field, and to not appear in Rothermel's picture, which is to hang under his eyes in the Capitol, is an insult to the State," one newspaper commented in mock indignation in late 1870.
Rothermel had already designated Geary's successful repulse of Confederate troops at Culp's Hill for one of the four smaller companion paintings which were to be executed after the main painting. But if the artist expected that to mollify the sitting governor, it did not have its intended effect. When "Battle of Gettysburg — Pickett's Charge" debuted in Philadelphia before a packed house at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in December 1870, Governor Geary was not in attendance.
For all the concern over who would be depicted, and how, the painting's most memorable and remarked-upon figure is entirely allegorical. Occupying the center of the canvas, in large relief, is not an officer or a commander, but a mere private. The federal soldier stands defiantly, legs straddled across a stonewall, arms wielding the butt end a musket, presumably prepared to fight to the death in defense of the Union. The key provided to accompany the painting identifies the figure as "Private Sills," but no such individual has ever been documented to the battle. Critics later speculated that Sills had been intended to represent an Everyman, the "valor and sacrifices of the common soldier." In contrast, the officers whose actions Rothermel so painstakingly researched are much smaller, and largely confined to the margins.
Related
Disunion Highlights
Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive.
If some objected to the painting's compositional balance, they chose not to publicly voice it. "Gettysburg was emphatically a soldiers' battle," The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph noted approvingly, "and while all honor and credit are due to the officers who aided in winning the victory, Mr. Rothermel's picture more truly represents the true character of the battle."
Despite receiving overwhelmingly positive public reaction, the state relinquished "Pickett's Charge" to Rothermel and the city of Philadelphia. The official line from Harrisburg was that there was no building in the capital large enough to accommodate it. Over the next two decades, the painting was displayed in various locations around the city, and occasionally traveled to other cities, including Chicago and London. It was not until 1894 that "Pickett's Charge," along with the four other paintings that made up the full commission, were finally delivered to Harrisburg.
Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.
Sources: Edward B. Coddington, "Rothermel's Paintings of the Battle of Gettysburg," Pennsylvania History 27 (January 1960); Marc Thistlewaite, "'Magnificence and Terrible Truthfulness': Peter F. Rothermel's 'The Battle of Gettysburg'" in William Blair and William Pencak, eds., "Making and Remaking Pennsylvania in the Civil War"; Jim Weeks, "Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine"; William H. Egle, ed., "Andrew Gregg Curtin: His Life and Services"; George E Reed, ed., "Pennsylvania Archives, Fourth Series, Volume VIII: Papers of the Governors, 1858-1871"; The Cambria Freeman, Dec. 22, 1870.
Curt Miner is a senior curator of history at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Pa., where he recently co-curated "Objects of Valor: Commemorating the Civil War in Pennsylvania," a new permanent exhibition that features "Pickett's Charge," along with Peter F. Rothermel's four other companion paintings in the Gettysburg series. The author would like to thank Beth Hager, Robert D. Hill and Andrea Lowery for their comments.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Opinionator | Disunion: Painting Pickett’s Charge
Dengan url
http://opinimasyarakota.blogspot.com/2013/11/opinionator-disunion-painting-pickettas.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Opinionator | Disunion: Painting Pickett’s Charge
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Opinionator | Disunion: Painting Pickett’s Charge
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar