Posted on 03/29/2007 10:06:50 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
The Virginia foundation confirmed that it has the "Enslaved Girl" watercolor "on approval." The painting was done by the wife of General Robert E. Lee at her family's Virginia plantation in 1830.
"The provenance looks airtight. It would be an important acquisition," Colonial Williamsburg spokesman Jim Bradley told The Associated Press Monday.
Laurel Acevedo of Alexander Gallery on Madison Avenue said the rare picture has been with Colonial Williamsburg since last week.
"We gave them a good price. We wanted it to go to a public institution," Acevedo said.
The portrait went on sale in January for $400,000 together with other memorabilia from the J.E.B. Stuart Collection of the Confederate general. Only the portrait went to Williamsburg, Acevedo said, declining to name the purchase price.
Measuring 4 inches wide and 5 3/4 inches high, the gold-framed watercolor on paper shows a somber girl with delicate features in a red dress with an apronlike white front balancing a wooden wash tub on her head. Trees and a split-rail fence are in the background.
Mary Anna Randolf Custis, daughter of George Washington's only grandson, painted the portrait in 1830 on the grounds of what became Arlington National Cemetery, a year before she married Robert E. Lee, her distant cousin.
Before Mrs. Lee gave the portrait to West Point cadet James Ewell Brown Stuart, class of 1854, while her husband was commandant, she inscribed "Topsy" on the dress in pencil, a reference to the slave child in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "UncleTom's Cabin." The novel roiled the conscience of abolitionists such as Mrs. Lee, who has earlier defied strictures against teaching slaves to read.
According to historical background provided by the gallery, Stuart pasted the watercolor onto the back of a drawing of a cavalry soldier on horseback slashing a watermelon with his sword.
"Whether the attachment was a conscious act or whether Stuart was oblivious to its meaning, it fails to diminish the significance of pairing an innocent slave with the highly trained soldier a few years before the outbreak of war," the documentation says.
The real name of the child in the portrait isn't recorded, but she is known to have been one of the slaves at the 1,100-acre Custis family plantation spread out along the Potomac River within view of Washington, D.C.
The plantation in Arlington, previously owned by George and Martha Washington, was confiscated during the Civil War and used as a burial site for Union dead from the Battle of Bull Run. Arlington later became the nation's most hallowed cemetery for military dead.
The Lees fled the plantation in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, when Robert E. Lee sided with the South and became a Confederate general, eventually commander in chief. He died in 1870 as president of Washington and Lee University, three years before his wife.
Acevedo said the gallery purchased the J.E.B. Stuart collection early this year from a private owner who had obtained it from descendants of the intrepid cavalry general, who died defending Richmond in 1864.
She said the gallery wanted it to go to a public collection "even though they normally can't pay as much as private collectors."
The lot included two pages of signatures from Stuart's West Point class and three fly leaves from a book signed by Stuart.
"These pieces remain on sale at the gallery," Acevedo said.
Interesting story about this painting.
"Whether the attachment was a conscious act or whether Stuart was oblivious to its meaning, it fails to diminish the significance of pairing an innocent slave with the highly trained soldier a few years before the outbreak of war," the documentation says."
Barf.
Thanks for the ping SB neat story
They were reading waaaaay to much into that one.
Sure 'nuff - good to see you StoneWall Brigade
Suspicious. UTC wasn't published until 1852, and took until 1857 to sell half a million copies. It was not an instant success, and would not have been read by many West Point cadets prior to an 1854 graduation.
According to the article, it was Mrs. Lee who named the portrait, not a West Point cadet.
Within a week of its release in the U.S., her book sold a phenomenal 10,000 copies, and 300,000 the first year. Sales were even higher in Britain. By 1854, her book was translated into 60 different languages.
"They were reading waaaaay to much into that one."
Entirely. I would like to see the watercolor, though.
And there is a legend that the back of the statute of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial has the profile of Gen. Lee. Thus Lee looks forever (though the marble wall) onto Arlington. Supposedly this was to show Lee's being cursed by never being able to again go to his home. The statue has other "hidden" messages supposedly put there by the sculptor, but they are not relevant here. Just adding my dos centavos.
Mrs. Lee was very talented. I think the fact that she gave it to Jeb Stuart showed the affection that both she and the General had for the young man.
Of course they are. And soon the usual suspects will be along to read waaaaay too much into it to.
It is an excellent watercolor, quite valuable.
The author is incorrect here. The first person buried at Arlington was Pvt. William Henry Christman, 67th Pennsylvania Infantry, May 13th 1864. He was killed at the battle of "The Wilderness". Bull Run was 2 years earlier.
Actually they sort of got that right, but not quite... They just weren't very clear about the facts.
From theArlington Cemetery website...
Arlington National Cemetery was established by Brig. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, who commanded the garrison at Arlington House, appropriated the grounds June 15, 1864, for use as a military cemetery. His intention was to render the house uninhabitable should the Lee family ever attempt to return. A stone and masonry burial vault in the rose garden, 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep, and containing the remains of 1,800 Bull Run casualties, was among the first monuments to Union dead erected under Meigs' orders. Meigs himself was later buried within 100 yards of Arlington House with his wife, father and son; the final statement to his original order.
Meigs was a friend of Lee before the war and took, quite personally, Lee's decision to fight for the South.
Meigs' decision to turn Arlington into a cemetary was for personal revenge. Like you stated, he did not want the Lee family, acutally that would be Custis Lee, who had inherted the property as the death of his grandfather, to ever inhabited it again.
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