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A patron admires Winslow Homer's "Skirmish in the Wilderness" steps from a sculpture of the
man who commanded the Union army there. (CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE.) |
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| John Rogers |
I must have looked strange to the other patrons at the
New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, hovering around the small, plaster sculpture shooting images with my iPhone at odd angles. But "The Council of War" -- an amazingly detailed work of art of the architects of the Union army's triumph during the Civil War -- is fascinating subject matter.
In sculptor
John Rogers' 1868 statuary, a calm Abraham Lincoln holds a map while Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant stand by the seated president. As I walked about the sculpture for 15 minutes or so, it seemed to change colors from off-gray to beige.
Of the three famous subjects, Grant easily was my favorite, looking resolute from one angle, compassionate from another. While steps away another visitor admired Winslow Homer's beautiful oil-on-canvas painting "
Skirmish in the Wilderness," I shot a closeup of the general who sent so many soldiers to their deaths in those dense thickets in Virginia in early May 1864.
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