On View
On viewObject number2006.66
Union Army Encampment
Artist
Johann Mongels Culverhouse
(Dutch, 1820-1891)
Dateca. 1860
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionsimage: 16 1/2 in. × 34 in. (41.9 × 86.4 cm)
frame: 24 1/2 × 42 × 1 1/2 in. (62.2 × 106.7 × 3.8 cm)
frame: 24 1/2 × 42 × 1 1/2 in. (62.2 × 106.7 × 3.8 cm)
Credit LineElisabeth Claire Lahti Fund
Exhibition History"Warhol, Chihuly and Others: Showcasing New KIA Acquisitions," KIA (Dec. 8, 2007 - Jan. 27, 2008).
"A Legacy for Kalamazoo: Works Acquired through the Elisabeth Claire Lahti Fund, 1998 - 2012," KIA (Sept. 29, 2012 - Jan. 20, 2013).
"Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century," KIA (September 7 - February 18, 2025)Label TextThese two paintings speak to the lasting power and influence of the Civil War in American memory. Culverhouse’s painting documents the war as it was unfolding, showing a Union camp busy with the activity of soldiers. Even at the time, there was a feeling that the Civil War was a period of great importance in the nation’s history. Mostly due to the hundreds of thousands who died during the conflict, it left a permanent impact on many of the nation’s citizens. Also, this historic conflict prompted many social, economic, legal, and political changes, which contributed to this belief. Wrote author Robert Penn Warren in 1961, the Civil War was "our felt history, history lived in the national imagination... It draws us as an oracle, darkly unriddled and portentous, of personal as well as national fate."
Will Sparks’ painting illustrates the lasting legacy of the war by focusing on a house that one of the Union’s great war heroes, General William Tecumseh Sherman, lived in while stationed in California during the 1840s. Evidently Sherman’s legend was so great that even a modest house that he had briefly lived in years before and thousands of miles away from his 1860s military exploits became a historic site in the early 20th century. [From Legendary Voices exhibition, 2024-25]
