Friday, April 09, 2004

Medpundit Art History Lesson: There's a story about the death of Lincoln that is often told in religious sermons:

From his earliest days in politics, Lincoln had a critic, an enemy, who continually treated him with contempt, a man by the name of Edwin Stanton. Stanton would say to newspaper reporters that Lincoln was a 'low cunning clown' and 'the original gorilla'. He said it was ridiculous for explorers to go to Africa to capture a gorilla 'when they could find one easily in Springfield, Illinois.' Lincoln never responded to such slander; he never retaliated in the least. And when, as President, he needed a Secretary of War, he selected Edwin Stanton. When his friends asked why, Lincoln replied, 'Because he is the best man for the job.'

The story may not be true. Stanton was something of a Republican mole in James Buchanan's Administration. Lincoln, or at least the Republican party, probably owed him a few favors. Nevertheless, its message of forgiveness and charity toward ones enemies makes it a fitting story for a president who was an emancipator of men and who died on Good Friday at the hands of his political enemies. It's all a part of the hagiography of Lincoln.

That transformation from reviled politician to American saint began early. Walt Whitman wrote poems immortalizing him. Henry Ward Beecher, who once condemned him from the pulpit, endowed him with a Christ-like legacy in his eulogy,""Dead-dead-dead, he yet speaketh." And American historical artist Alonzo Chappel gave him the classical heroic death portrait:



The Death of Lincoln, Alonzo Chappel, 1865
(If image doesn't download, click here)

The son of a tinsmith, Chappel was born in 1828 in New York City. He had a life-long fascination with early American history, which he turned into a career by painting famous 18th century American events and people. Little wonder that someone so enamored of the 18th century would choose the "Death of.." form of historic painting for this watershed moment in American history.

The most famous "Death of..." protrait was The Death of Wolfe by Benjamin West. Painted in 1770, eleven years after Wolfe's actual death on the Plains of Abraham, the painting is more romance than history, (most of the men gathered around the slain hero were at the battle, but not at Wolfe's side), but as hagiography it's splendid, evoking the posture of the dead Christ as seen in so many Descent from the Cross paintings, as well as Greek depictions of fallen heroes. (Wolfe's death was also immortalized in song.)

Thirty-five years later, Horatio Nelson got the same treatment by Arthur William Devis, but to a more realistic effect. Devis strove for accuracy, visiting Nelson's ship, The Victory when it arrived in port, sketching the men who attended him during his last hours and relying on the numerous detailed published accounts of his death. In Nelson's case, the portrait, serves as both hagiography and historical record. (Nelson got a theatetrical West painting, too, though it manages to be both less accurate and less moving.)

Sixty years later, and Chappel's The Death of Lincoln is even more realistic and less romantic. It doesn't so much tell a story as record an event, much like a camera would. Lincoln lies on a bed, already dead, not dying, and not in the arms of his men, although his wife does lie across him, weeping, in an appropriately dramatic style. Each of the men and women surrounding the death bed were actually with him before he died, although not at the same time. (It was a small room.) Even their postures are reminiscent of the photographs of that period - stiff, formal, and posed. It's the heroic death painting gone common. But, while it may lack the theatrics of Wolfe's death portrait or the poignancy of Nelson's, it nonetheless must have spoken to the hearts of a grieving nation.

 

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