The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama

I just booked the bus tickets to take the Hayfoot and a friend to the Barnes Museum in early November. We visited the old Barnes four years ago and are eager to see what they have done with the new facility. I have heard mixed reviews. Another great museum in the City of Brotherly Love is the Philadelphia Art Museum. One of the works in its collection is Manet’s The Battle of the U.S.S. “Kearsarge” and the C.S.S. “Alabama.”  For some reason the exhibition catalog for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2003 show Manet and the American Civil War came through my in box the other day. Alas this one somehow fell under my radar nine years ago, probably because I returned to graduate school in January ’03 and was too busy. I am sitting here having my Sunday coffee entranced by the story of Manet and the Kearsarge. The Met Museum website explains:

On June 19, 1864, the United States warship Kearsarge sank the Confederate raider Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France, in one of the most celebrated naval engagements of the American Civil War. The battle was widely reported in the illustrated press and riveted public attention on both sides of the Channel. When Kearsarge later anchored off the French resort town of Boulogne-sur-Mer it was thronged by curious visitors, one of whom was the artist Édouard Manet. Although he did not witness the historic battle, Manet made a painting of it partly as an attempt to regain the respect of his colleagues after having been ridiculed for his works in the 1864 Salon. Manet’s picture of the naval engagement and his portrait of the victorious Kearsarge belong to a group of his seascapes of Boulogne whose unorthodox perspective and composition would profoundly influence the course of French painting.

It is a fascinating story on many levels, artistically, socially, diplomatically, and otherwise. For one thing it is often lost on us that the rest of the world, or at least Europe, was paying attention to our Civil War. It makes one see Manet with a different perspective as well.  Check it out here, and enjoy your Sunday.

Image of Winslow Homer by Naploean Sarony

Homer’s Eight Bells

The Portland (Maine) Museum of Art is re-opening Winslow Homer’s Prouts Neck studio after a six-year, $10.8 million renovation. The institution purchased the property from the artist’s descendants in 2006. Homer’s Civil War sketchings are some of the most iconographic images of the conflict, equal to the drawings of Alfred Waud and photographs of Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner in our visual understanding of the war. What is striking about Homer, and many other figures from the Civil War Era, is the length of their careers after the war. Already known for his Civil War drawings, Homer carved out a second, even larger career during the Gilded Age and well into the Progressive Era. He lived until 1910.

The Civil War sketches were works of realism, drawn for an anxious audience eager for news from the front in the age just prior photography’s maturation and widespread accessibility. The post war paintings are impressionistic, created by an artist using his full powers. These works represented America moving past the death and destruction of the war and reinventing itself for the modern age. At the same time they are somewhat idyllic in that many of them are outdoor nature scenes, eschewing the hard reality of an increasingly urbanized America.

If you have not been I recommend you visit the recently the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s New American Wing. My favorite Homer painting has always been The Veteran in a New Field, his 1865 work depicting a returned soldier who has put down his sword in exchange for a plowshare. The Met has many Homer pieces, some of which can be seen here.

Earlier this year I wrote about the Marshall House flag, the posting of which you can read below. Alas yours truly will be at the Yankees game and so will have to watch the repeat, but tonight’s History Detectives examines whether a swatch found in some old boxes by a daughter going through her parent’s belongings is indeed part of the famous banner. Portions were filmed at the New York State Military Museum in Saratoga Springs.

The New York State Military Museum has one of the most extensive collections of flags in the United States, going back two centuries to the War of 1812. Its collection of Civil War battle flags is the largest in the country, which should not be a surprise given the Empire State’s outsized role in bringing an end to the Late Unpleasantness. One of the crown jewels of the state’s collection is the Marshall Flag, the Confederate national banner which flew above the Marshall House hotel in Alexandria Virginia until taken down by Colonel Elmer Ellsworth in May 1861.

The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes: Volume one, the Opening Battles

Virginia passed its Ordinance of Secession on May 23 and tensions were high in the capital and just across the Potomac in Virginia. The following day Ellsworth noted the flag flying atop the building and in a fit of bravado dashed to the roof and pulled down the stars and bars. When he got to the bottom of the stairs Ellsworth was shot by proprietor James Jackson. Jackson in turn was shot by one of Ellsworth’s men. Both died instantly.

Currier and Ives print from the collection of the Library of Congress

Ellsworth was a dashing figure and a favorite of President Lincoln. He had been the colonel of the 11th New York “Fire Zouaves,” whose men had spent much of 1861 parading with great fanfare to large, appreciative crowds across the North. Their showmanship had more in common with acrobatics and synchronization than military tactics, and their colorful uniforms only added to their popularity and mystique. Ellsworth’s death made him a martyr across the North. The gruesome and violent nature of his death, however, was also one of the first signals to Americans of what the war would entail. How could a man so handsome and young, so vibrant, so full of life and charisma be taken away in an instant? Such is the nature of war.

Envelope from the collection of the New-York Historical Society

The NYS Military Museum has spent the last several years conserving what is left of the Marshall House flag. Here is an overview.

Many undoubtedly know that a replica of the Civil War hot air balloon Intrepid is supposed to sail this summer. The story has been in the sesquicentennial news for some months now. Well, put the emphasis on the supposed to. An unforeseen helium shortage may ground the project before it takes off.

(Update: The Intrepid will fly this July after all. Macy’s–the folks who put on the annual Thanksgiving Day parade–are donating 50,000 cubic feet of helium to the Genesee Country Village & Museum to get the project off the ground–literally.

(image/inventor and aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe rises to witness the fighting at Seven Pines, June 1862; Matthew Brady studio)