Secrets of the past in a Civil War painting.
Have you ever been walking through a museum or galley and noticed an old painting on the wall that caught your eye and wondered where it may have been made and by whom? Some may have an artists signature or mark on them and even though you might have heard of the artist you still wonder where the scenery was painted or what the artist might have been thinking at that time? What if you looked just a little closer or spend a little more time scanning the work and something that others might not see presents itself to you? So it is with this painting and I will show you what I see.
I believe that this is a still life that was painted by Sarah Miriam Peale (1800-1885) at the end of March in 1862.
Sarah had moved to St Louis Missouri in 1847 due to ill health from her studio in Baltimore Maryland and had produced many portraits of congressman, diplomats and wealthy individuals from that time. Her family was a well known family of painters and she was highly sought after for the wonderful portraits she produced. Her father was a miniaturist by the name of James Peale and had passed that skill on to Sarah even though she mainly did portraits.
Sarah Miriam Peale self portrait 1818
St Louis during the Civil War
St Louis was a very tumultuous place at the start of the Civil War, Missouri was a border state and had many factions of confederates and union sympathizers fighting among them. At the beginning of 1862 the Union army had established itself through a series of conflicts and troop positioning that occurred 1861 and was firmly in control of St Louis. It was a major economic hub connected to the Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi river systems and a very important army depot to which they could launch their forces into the southern states . It was headquarters for Major General Henry Halleck and one of his subordinates was Brigadier General Ulysses S Grant who on February 16, 1862 after the battle of Fort Donelson was promoted by Abraham Lincoln to Major General.
The Generals
Major General Henry Halleck
Henry Halleck became a Major General on August 19, 1861 and commanded the department of Missouri in St Louis. On March 11, 1862 his command was enlarge to include Ohio and Kansas. President Lincoln summoned Halleck to the East to become General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States, as of July 23, 1862.
Brigadier General Isaac Ferdinand Quinby
Brigadier General Isaac Quinby is one of those enigmatic generals that you never hear about in the history books on the civil war but has an incredibly interesting story to tell. He graduated from West Point in the same class as Ulysses S Grant (1843) and both fought in the Mexican war (1846-1848) where he served with 3rd Artillery. In 1852 he resigned from the army and became a professor of math and philosophy at the University of Rochester in NY. When the civil war began in 1861 he was appointed colonel of the 13th New York Volunteer Infantry. He led his regiment in the battle of First Bull Run (July 21,1861) and resigned in August 1861. On March 17, 1862 his friend General Grant offered him a commission as Brigadier General in command of the district of the Mississippi which was within Grants department. His wife was named Elizabeth (nee Gardner) he lived to age 71 and died in 1891
Major General Ulysses S Grant