Don Troiani's Civil War (review)

268CIVIL WAR HISTORY Lincoln's transformation was less consistent than that of Washington and is explained with the use of numerous photographs, caricatures, and prints. Although care is taken by Hölzer to develop the history of image printing in the age of Washington, fully one-third of the book is devoted to chronicling the legacy of Lincoln. The text has a confident and fast-paced style when it shifts from Washington to Lincoln (79) and expands the theme of Merrill Peterson's Lincoln in American Memory (1994). This shift is understandable because of the author's recognized scholarship in the field of Lincolniana, as exhibited in his collaboration with Gabor S. Boritt and Mark E. Neely in The Lincoln Image (1984). The strength of the book is a well-documented position that Washington and Lincoln, through widely circulated media images, reached a unique and lofty status within American iconography. The use of the two figures in the same picture, particularly after Lincoln's assassination, "confirmed for Lincoln a remarkable ascendancy in the national pantheon" (174). Hölzer identifies a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the images created from the portraits of Washington and, later, from the photographs of Lincoln . He attributes these problems and frequent poor quality to the commercial interest of the artist and promoters. The introduction of photography in the age of Lincoln, while allowing a more accurate likeness than that of his predecessor , allowed the distribution of caricatures and often negative images of the sixteenth president. Therefore, the transformation of Lincoln is less consistent and finally overcomes these negative images only after his assassination. The book contains 147 excellent illustrations, and Hölzer explains their relevance with interesting and insightful commentary. There are, however, some frustrating technical problems that tend to distract the reader. The illustrations are frequently not identified by a number and are often placed in an awkward relationship to the commentary. Despite these minor difficulties, Holzer's book is a significant contribution to the existing literature and amplifies the relationship of Washington and Lincoln in American popular culture. Charles M. Hubbard Abraham Lincoln Museum Don Troiani's Civil War. Art by Don Troiani. Text by Brian C. Pohanka. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1995. Pp. 216. $4995.) Historians and Civil War buffs who have long admired the art of Don Troiani through illustrations of his work in the Smithsonian magazine and in American Heritage (and in television productions such as Civil War Journal, for which the artist serves as a consultant) will be delighted with the publication of Don Troiani's Civil War, a beautifully printed and designed collection of his paintings accompanied by intelligently written and interesting commentaries on the featured engagements by Brian C. Pohanka, an author who formerly worked on the Time-Life Books Civil War series. Depictions of Civil War battles book reviews269 from First Bull Run to Appomattox, with considerable emphasis on Gettysburg, the subject of sixteen pictures, alternate with meticulous studies of single figures dressed in the precisely rendered uniforms of their units. Every picture exhibits Troiani's painstakingly archaeological approach to his craft. Determined to "Paint it how it was," Troiani carefully studies the uniforms, weapons, and paraphernalia in his own extensive collection and visits historical museums to examine battle flags and the remains of uniforms before beginning a composition . Not surprisingly, an artist ofsuch conscientiousness has little patience with the work of earlier artists in the field such as Gilbert Gaul and William T. Trego, who frequently painted arms and equipment in a historically inaccurate manner. Born in New York City in 1 949, Troiani began to collect military equipment at age eleven, and his fondness for old uniforms became a passion when a year later, while on a family vacation in Paris, he spent an entire day by himself at the Musée de l'Armée. He received his first formal art training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and then during subsequent summers at New York's Art Students League, but prejudices against realist art he encountered at those schools made it necessary for him to teach himself through an intense personal study of nineteenth-century art. Like Frederic Remington...