“City Point, Virginia, Headquarters of General Grant”

This stunning oil painting — 30-1/8 inches by 60-1/4 inches —  is at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. Click here or on the image to enlarge and zoom in on mind-blowing details. 

“Edward Lamson Henry was apparently a somewhat timorous youth, for when the Civil War broke out, although he was well over twenty, he did not attempt to enlist in the army.  Instead he worked for a fairly brief period in the fall of 1864 as captain’s clerk aboard a supply vessel in the service of the Quartermaster General’s Department. His lifelong passion for all forms of transportation may be seen in the series of scenes along the Potomac and James Rivers, most of which he sketched from the deck of his vessel …. [T]he wealth of detail gives his paintings an almost jewel-like quality. One can even recognize a likeness in the almost microscopic figure of General Grant seated before his headquarters.”
Hermann Warner Williams, Jr. The Civil War: The Artists’ Record, Washington, DC: Corcoran Museum of Art, 1961, p. 19.

“Union headquarters in the Campaign of 1864-5, composed of buildings and tents upon a high shore overlooking a body of water with a fishing boat moored at the right; at the left is a busy scene of workmen on a dock loading army wagons. Signed at lower right, E.L. Henry, and dated 1873; inscribed ’65 for the year of the campaign.”
Barbizon Paintings, American Historical Paintings [sales catalogue] New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, 1938, p. 68

For a complete treatment of the artist, his personal life, and his career see Elizabeth McCausland’s “The Life and Work of Edward Lamson Henry, 1841-1919,” New York State Museum Bulletin 339, (Albany, NY: The University of the State of New York, September 1945), pp. 1 -381.

All links were accessed April 4, 2021.