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Mort Künstler is "the foremost Civil War artist of our time—if not all time," says Professor James I. Robertson Jr., the dean of Civil War historians. "To study his paintings is to simply see history alive." This second of four volumes of Mort Künstler's Civil War paintings depicts the conflict just before the battle at Fredericksburg and leading up to Gettysburg.
After the battle of Antietam, Union commander Ambrose E. Burnside renewed the march on Richmond with a disastrous attack at Fredericksburg. The paintings Strategy in the Snow, So Close to the Enemy, and In the Hands of Providence convey the nature of the December 1862 battle.
With spring came a new Federal commander, Joseph Hooker, and an attack along a wider front. Eventually, the armies clashed at an obscure crossroads in the Virginia Wilderness known as Chancellorsville. Here the Lee-Jackson partnership reached its apex, and her Jackson was wounded and later died. Lee’s audacity and Jackson’s determination are brilliantly depicted with the paintings Last Council, Tactics and Strategy, and The Last Meeting. The crescendo and climax of the battle are portrayed in End of a Legend and His Supreme Moment.
Subsequently, Lee launched his own offensive campaign into Union territory. Here Künstler explores the high morale of the Confederate with a series of paintings around Jeb Stuart’s grand review of his cavalry corps and the two opulent balls he hosted prior to the beginning of the Gettysburg campaign. Likewise, the artist conveys the optimism of Lee’s soldiers as they splash across the Potomac in “Maryland, My Maryland.”
Perhaps no other artist has recorded so many events in the Civil War, and certainly none have painted them with the authenticity and drama of Mort Künstler.
About the author
Mort Künstler is the reigning dean of American historical artists. Enthralled with the Civil War, he has presented the story of conflict in vivid images, many of which have been featured in one-man shows at the prestigious Hammer Galleries in New York City and at museums around the country. More than a dozen books of his paintings have been published, including Images of the Civil War, Gettysburg, Jackson and Lee, Gods and Generals, The Confederate Spirit, and The Civil War Art of Mort Künstler. He lives in Oyster Bay, New York.
