Codori Barn from Little Round Top

I took a break from working on my latest Battle of Gettysburg/Civilians of Gettysburg piece about Basil Biggs, to produce this small landscape from the Gettysburg battlefield. I created a much smaller version of this scene in colored pencil for entry in the upcoming Miniature Art 2011 exhibition at the Council for the Arts in Chambersburg, PA, and decided to try this second, larger version using watercolor and colored pencil on a sienna-colored piece of Pastelmat. Once again I love this particular combination of media and working surface; it's the same combination I used on Summer Sunset, McPherson Farm (see post from June 12), and on my one-day drawing/painting giveaway of  Stone House, Manassas National Battlefield (see post from June 21).

Basil Biggs, Step 2

Made a little progress -- at least it's easier to tell this is a horse! So far I've not been able to find photos of the buildings on the south side of the first block of York Street. Next week I hope to get to the Wills House where there's a new diorama that shows the buildings that were standing on streets close to the square in 1863, and it sounds as if it's very well-researched and accurate. In the meantime I'm working on some small landscapes of the Gettysburg battlefield that I may post. If we get the fringes of Hurricane Irene here in Gettysburg over the next  two days, I may have a lot of time for blogging! Who would've guessed we'd get an earthquake and a hurricane all in the same week?

Battle of Gettysburg/Gettysburg Civilians Series: Basil Biggs

Not much to see with this composition, yet -- in fact, you may have to look at the enlarged view to understand what it is. The only portion that shows color, at this point, is the -- um --"hindquarters" of the horse. The scene is a depiction of an event which occurred prior to and shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg: the evacuation of the town's black population, among them a farmer by the name of Basil Biggs. Understandably fearful that the invading Confederate army would take them prisoner and send them south into slavery, the local African-American residents either hid or made their way out of town to presumably safer locations.  Biggs fled town, on a borrowed horse, heading out York Road as he could see the Confederates filling the town square from the west.

I have a little more research to do, to determine what buildings were standing along this stretch of York Road in 1863, besides the Lutheran Church that I have roughly indicated to the left. But I thought that posting this very early stage would help jumpstart my progress on this piece. The composition is 16" x 20", rendered on museum board with colored pencil using a traditional dry layering, sharp point-scumbling technique.

Back to Work

This post title would seem to imply that I haven't been working, which certainly isn't the case! What I'm really getting at is that recently I've been posting previously completed works that relate to 1861, as 2011 is the 150th anniversary for that year. Now I think it's time to get back to my original primary intention for this blog: posting newly-completed works and work-in-progress.

In keeping with my Civil War 150 Project, and to have an image to submit to an upcoming exhibition at the Clara Barton National Historic Site entitled "The Art of Clara Burton", I completed the above image in colored pencil on Canson Mi Teintes paper (color: Sand), Study of Clara Barton. I'm still learning about Ms. Barton and I'm sure will do more works that feature her in the years to come, since she played such an enormous role in the Civil War. This piece was an effort to study her facial features and see what I might learn from them by working closely with two of her Civil War era portrait photographs. Ms. Barton's first involvement with Civil War nursing was the result of her witnessing the wounded and dying soldiers brought back to Washington (where she worked at the Patent Office) after the First Battle of Manassas, something which would have been occurring approximately 150 years ago.

The Aftermath of Battle: "Collateral Damage"

This piece serves as homage to Judith Carter Henry, the first civilian killed in the Civil War.

The Notions of Safety and Security

The Final Chapter in the Life of Judith Carter Henry

In the summer of 1861, Judith Carter Henry was an 84-year-old widow, living on a small farm just south and east of the intersection of the Warrenton Turnpike and Manassas-Sudley Road near Manassas, Virginia; Spring Hill, the farm was called.  She had lived there for 35 years and, in fact, was born less than a mile away.  For most of those years she had lived a quiet farm life, marking the changing seasons with the cycle of planting and harvesting, and raising four children, watching them grow to adulthood.

But in July of 1861, things took a dramatic and unfortunate turn for the elderly widow.  Union and Confederate troops had gradually begun moving into the region, and Judith’s daughter Ellen, who lived with her mother, became gravely concerned.  In May her brother Hugh, living in Alexandria, VA, had written a letter emphasizing his belief that their mother’s “entire helplessness” should keep her safe from harm from the invading armies.  But Ellen, and another brother, John, who lived nearby, feared the worst. They determined to try to move their dear mother to safety.  Despite evidence that the fighting was edging ever closer, Judith, who was frail and bedridden at that point in her life, did not want to leave the familiar and comforting surroundings of her home.  She protested as, on the morning of July 21, they attempted to carry her from the house on a mattress, and the group made it only as far as the spring house: not only was Judith begging to be taken back, but Ellen and John also realized that the troops were too close and the situation was too dangerous to permit their plan to work.  So they returned to the house, and Judith was carried to her bed. They could only hope that Hugh’s earlier assurance of her safety would prove true.

As morning turned to afternoon, Union artillery moved their guns onto the Henry House property, not far from the house. They soon discovered they were being fired at by Confederate sharpshooters, who were either hidden inside the house, or just outside of it and using it for cover.  Since nearly all of the other residents of the immediate area had long since fled to safety, Captain James B. Ricketts had no idea there were civilians still inside.  His immediate goal was to put an end to the firing of the Confederate sharpshooters, and he shelled the house.  One of the shells burst in Judith’s bedroom, and she died of her wounds soon after.

A woman that history has recorded only as “Florence”, attended the memorial service for Judith Henry held on the grounds of the farm, two days after the battle. In a letter to her sister, she gave this account:

        The papers will have told you before this reaches you that old Mrs. Henry was killed during the
         battle…I do not think I ever felt more deeply than when I stood among the wreck and ruin of her
         home and saw the poor mangled body of the old lady placed in the coffin and borne to her last
         resting-place by stranger hands…Around the Henry garden, where a fence had stood on Sunday
         morning, was a hedge of althea, the only things that had escaped destruction.  They were loaded
         with crimson and white blossoms, and you cannot imagine how strangely they looked in their
         purity and beauty amidst that scene of desolation and death.  I stopped to gather a few of these
         “roses of Sharon” to place on the coffin…

In 1870, a new house was built to replace the one in which Judith’s life ended.  A photograph, taken in 1896, features a very elderly Hugh Henry seated on a chair on the porch of this house, the same house that stands on the battlefield today.  In the picture, just to the right side of the porch, can be seen a vigorous Rose of Sharon, quite possibly one of the very ones that were such a part of Judith’s happier times at Spring Hill.

150 Years Ago Today, July 21, 1861: First Battle of Manassas, Part 3

This piece serves to remind us once again, that it isn't just adults who are impacted by war.

The End of Innocence

A New Day is Dawning

 The battle outside raging

will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

for the times, they are a-changing.

These Bob Dylan lyrics, though written for twentieth-century ears, also reflect the reality of the turmoil as war began to touch the lives of Americans in the summer of 1861.

 Northeastern Virginians who took the time to record their impressions noted that Sunday, July 21^st, 1861, was a remarkably beautiful summer morning.   In the area near Sudley Ford over Bull Run Creek, just north of Manassas Junction, Virginia, many of the local residents were out, dressed in their Sunday finest, preparing to attend services at Sudley church.  In fact, some accounts indicate that a number of worshippers had already arrived at the church, little suspecting what was soon to unfold before them.

 Around 9 o’clock that morning, 13,000 Union troops under division commanders David Hunter and Samuel Heintzelman approached Sudley Ford, nearing completion of their flanking movement around the Confederate army; a maneuver they had begun nearly seven hours earlier.  Captain E.P. Alexander, Chief Signal Officer for General P.G.T. Beauregard  (commander of the Confederate forces in the area), positioned on a signal station on Wilcoxen Hill near Manassas Junction, was the first to spot the Federals approaching from the north: “. . .(C)areful observation. . .detailed the glitter of bayonets all along a road crossing the valley. . .” The first of the Union troops passed Sudley church around 9:30; within 30 minutes the church was converted to a battlefield hospital.

“I wish I could adequately describe the loveliness of this summer Sabbath morning.  In the midst of war we were in peace.  There was not a cloud in the sky; a gentle breeze rustled the foliage over our heads, mingling its murmurs with the soft notes of the wood-birds; the thick carpet of leaves under our feet deadened the sound of the artillery wheels and of the tramp of men.  Everybody felt the influence of the scene, and the men, marching on their leafy path, spoke in subdued tones.  A Rhode Island officer riding beside me quoted some lines from Wordsworth fitting the morning, which I am sorry I cannot recall.  Colonel Slocum of the Second Rhode Island rode up and joined in our talk about the peaceful aspect of nature around us.  In less than an hour I saw him killed while cheering on his men. . .”

 --Lieutenant Colonel Francis S. Fiske, 2^nd New Hampshire Infantry

150 Years Ago Today, July 21, 1861: First Battle of Manassas, Part 2

Yesterday's post featured The Awakening, a colored pencil painting focusing on the widely-publicized Washington civilians and politicians who came out to view the battle. But this post focuses on local citizens -- and one in particular -- who viewed the battle from the other side of Bull Run creek:

Far from Home

Soldier’s Son; Reluctant Witness

Many Civil War researchers and enthusiasts are familiar with the reports of Washington civilians riding out in their carriages to view the action of the First Battle of Manassas.  But as historian David Detzer reports in Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861:

          Almost overlooked in the accounts was the fact that many civilians observed the battle on the opposite     

          side of Bull Run…Their vantage point was much better than the Centreville knoll, and they could see

          more of what was happening.  One of them was a boy of about twelve… He knew his father was fighting

          over there, and he wept.

 In reading this, I was immediately struck by the idea that this is the sort of personal reality which is so often overlooked in the general histories, and yet it is so representative of what war “feels like” for those individuals who are caught up in it. Upon researching further, I learned that a woman known to us only as “Florence”, who was presumably the wife of a Confederate officer stationed near Manassas, had come to the area to stay with family in order to be closer to her husband. As a result, she found herself right in the midst of the turmoil of the battle. In a letter to her sister dated July 24^th, 1861, she describes her encounter with this young boy on the afternoon of July 21, in an area close to the field of battle known as the “Douglas Heights”:

         Near me, on a noble horse that bore the marks of long and hasty travel, sat a boy of about twelve years

         old, the son of Colonel B____s, who had come from his home near Aldie that morning. His large blue

         eyes were fixed upon the distant scene, and his handsome features were convulsed with pain as he

         exclaimed aloud: “My father is in the midst of the fight; I must go to him!”  More than one detaining hand

         was laid upon his (sic) bridle, and several old men, gathering around him, represented the impossibility of

         finding his father in such a scene…I felt the tears dimming my eyes as I strove to speak some words of

         comfort to the boy.

With little solid information about this boy, I considered what may have gone through his mind, as he rode out alone some twenty miles from his home to this field of battle. He was probably driven by a desire to see his father, whom he may not have seen in a while.  He may have thought, in initially heading out, that it would be exciting to witness the battle; he may have imagined that his father would be easy to locate; he may have been thinking back to the pageantry of parades or rallies he witnessed in the several months past. But when he arrives, he is totally unprepared for the fearful spectacle he sees: the smoke, the noise, the confusion, the vast number of troops – the “machinery” of war. 

 The paper in his hand is my own symbolic addition. Is it a letter from his father providing details about his company?  Is it a letter the boy wrote, hoping to get it to his father?  Is it a map? Regardless, it is the implication of a simple, basic human desire to connect with a loved one; a human need that, sadly, must be suppressed if the machinery of war is to be effective. Still, his deeply personal connection to the battle will not allow him the sort of detached curiosity that typified the mood of the Washington civilians watching from the other side of Bull Run Creek.

If you would like to see more of my Civil War-themed work, or are interested in ordering prints, please visit my website at http://www.CivilWarFineArt.com or email me at CivilWarFineArt@yahoo.com.