Lot 1175: John Sartain (1808-1897) after Peter Rothermel (1812-1895) Fine American and European Furniture, Silver, Folk and Decorative Arts and Clocks

Battle of Gettysburg, 1885 Engraving Published by Joseph A. Joel, 84 Nassau Street, New York, "From the Original Picture Painted for the State of Pennsylvania under award of Commission appointed by the Legislature" 20 7/8 x 35 7/8in (53.0 x 91.1cm)

53.0 x 91.1cm

Pickett's Charge, Battle of Gettysburg was commissioned in 1867 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Its grim subject matter was highly controversial after the conclusion of the bloody Civil War, but John Sartain, chief of the Philadelphia Centennial Art Bureau in 1876, nevertheless chose to include the work in the exhibition. Sartain later engraved this image after that original. Peter Rothermel was a major mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia history painter who studied with John R. Smith and later with Bass Otis. He was a director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a founding member of The Union League of Philadelphia. During his long career, he painted a significant number of historical works, including Patrick Henry Before the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1851, (Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, Brookneal, Virginia.) See Mark Thistlethwaite, Painting in the Grand Manner: The Art of Peter Frederick Rothermel (1812-1895),(Chadds Ford, Pa.: The Brandywine River Museum, 1995) and Barbara J. Mitnick, The Union League of Philadelphia: the first one hundred and fifty years, (Philadelphia, 2012), pp. 142-143.