Saturday, February 2, 2013

The Generals- Paintings of Union Officers of Gettysburg

Winfield Scott Hancock

Preparing my studio for the opening of the "GO Brooklyn" event, I was coached by my family to include a series of paintings I call the "Generals".The generals live in our loft, stacked in a remote corner. Stacked one on top of each other they are over three feet high! They are oil on plywood, mounted on a 11/2 inch wood stretcher bar. Each portrait is 11"x14". I spent about one month painting them and I have about 20 in all. I had originally envisioned displaying them hung in a grid format on the wall of five across by four high. But now I've grown accustom to them stacked one on top of another on the floor.
This series was inspired after reading Stephen W. Sears book "Gettysburg" three years ago. Whenever I came across the name of a Union officer who's heroic action during the battle moved me, I looked up there photograph in the on-line picture collection of the Library of Congress. They have some high resolution TIFF files of most of the Union officers. It was fascinating connecting a face with there heroic act. My love of the photographic images of the time and the intersection of painting took over from there and here is the results.



Samuel Kosciuszko Zook

George Sykes 

Danial E. Sickles

Joshua Chamberlain 

Francis C Barlow

Adelbert Ames 

George Lamb Willard

Von Steinwehr 

George Gordon Meade 

Daniel Butterfield

John Fulton Reynolds

Henry Baxter

Gouverneur Kemble Warren 

Thomas Smyth 

O.O. Howard 

Abner Doubleday 

Henry Warner Slocum 

Edward Ephraim Cross