Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802-1920

Exhibitions, Collecting, and International Trends

67 1865–1920 Exhibitions, Collecting, and International Trends A New England expatriate and a Confederate penitent address the newly freed slaves In March 1865 Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau as a means of addressing the needs of African-Americans in the former slave states. In Kentucky, the Bureau established offices in Lexington, Louisville, and Paducah under General Clinton Fisk. Fisk reported to Congress that he had seen thirteen black soldiers whipped and two blinded in an attack in Lexington. There were reports of other assaults throughout the state. These episodes and the larger social issue of how the races could coexist in the postbellum world attracted the attention of two artists who had previously made their living by painting portraits but who became increasingly well known as painters of historical genre works.1 Thomas Waterman Wood was a native of Vermont who may have had studied with Chester Harding early in his career. Prior to moving to Nashville in 1859 Wood had studied in Europe and worked as an itinerant artist along the mid-Atlantic from Baltimore to New York. Wood remained in Nashville until 1863, when he moved to Louisville. Once in Louisville, he painted many highly detailed portraits of children. These most often featured the subject sitting in an allegorical meadow surrounded by an abundance of fruit, flowers, and foliage, embodiments of the lush Victorian sense of the Edenic nature of childhood. In 1865, in the midst of Kentucky’s readjustment, Wood is said to have witnessed a one-legged African-American war veteran struggling across a street in Louisville, supported by a set of improvised crutches. This prompted a series of images of newly freed men called variously War Episodes and A Bit of War History, which the artist began in Louisville and first exhibited in New York in 1867, after having moved there. Many of these paintings feature the same architectural background detail: the wall of a provost marshall’s office plastered with an announcement for volunteers, in which is set an open door through which we can see the Stars and Stripes of the Union. To the right a chair leans against the wall, and to the left the edge of a staked tent sprawls across the dirt.2 Two works, A Bit of War History: The Recruit and A Bit of War History: The Veteran, display powerful allegorical undercurrents (Figs. 59, 60). In The Recruit we Figure 59 (facing page). Thomas Waterman Wood (1823–1903), A Bit of War History: The Recruit, 1866, oil on canvas, 281/4 × 201/4˝, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 84.12b. Figure 60 (overleaf). Thomas Waterman Wood (1823–1903), A Bit of War History: The Veteran, 1866, oil on canvas, 281/4 × 201/4˝, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 84.12c. 1865–1920 69 see a black soldier in full regalia as he prepares to march to war, gun slung over his shoulder, perhaps to the beat of the drum we can see through the doorway below the flag. Another, smaller flag is plastered to the wall above the office sign, while the chair is littered with newspapers. With his rakish cap and jaunty pose, this volunteer is not the cruel caricature of Currier and Ives’s Darktown variety. Rather, a touching sense of sincerity colors the work. As a pendant, The Veteran tells a different story. War over, the drum is gone from the doorway and the wall shows signs of neglect and decay. Propped against that wall are the trappings of battle gear, a rifle from which dangles a bayonet and a powder pouch, and beneath the chair lies a rucksack. The veteran stands at attention, saluting left, held up by crude crutches, which support a leg that has been amputated below the knee. Again, a profound sense of sincerity underlies an intense allegory. When the two paintings are hung as pendants, the recruit would be seen as marching toward the veteran, who is saluting him. Though the obvious message is that the price of volunteering is high, there are less obvious implications as well. As a pair, these works embody the willingness to go to war for the cause of freedom and the shabby circumstances that that freedom produces. The status of the African-American in Kentucky did not greatly improve after emancipation, as the state legislature enacted legislation to circumvent the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, which Kentucky did not...