Their Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Art of the Civil War. Lecture by Stephen May

Stephen May is an independent historian, writer and lecturer about art, culture and historic preservation.   He has taken particular interest in preserving, maintaining and interpreting sites associated with American painters and sculptors and has a special interest in art history as seen in his articles in Antiques and the Arts Weekly for which he is a featured writer.

              He has written for many additional periodicals such as American Artist, American Arts Quarterly, American Heritage, American History, Art & Antiques, Art New England, ARTnews, British Heritage, Down East, Early American Life, France Magazine, Islands, MidAtlantic Country, Pennsylvania Heritage, Preservation Magazine, Sculpture Review, Smithsonian Magazine, Southern Accents, Southwest Art, Travel & Leisure, and Washingtonian; and newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times.

Their Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Art of the Civil War will survey the ways painters, sculptors and photographers--North and South--recorded the conflict and the home front during the Civil War.

As May states in his article titled “The Civil War and American Art” in Antiques and the Arts Weekly, “Artists, filled with anxiety and surrounded by the impact of strife, sought to come to grips with the horrendous conflict that photographers made so graphic for so many. American painters of this era worked almost exclusively in landscape, portraiture and genre, with the former the predominant form.” The lecture will cover ways in which artists recorded the war on land and sea, the ways in which photography brought images of battlefield reality to the home front, and how a French artist, who did not witness the battle, created the finest painting of our Civil War. Artists to be discussed include Homer, Gifford, Bierstadt and many more.

The art and studio of John Rogers will be emphasized. In its May 1975 issue, American History Illustrated magazine featured an article, “Sculptor for the Union,” that viewed Rogers’ works as legendary in representing the mood and pathos of the Civil War.