Existing comment:
The murals in this gallery were commissioned by the Confederate Memorial Association and painted between 1913 and 1920. For nearly a century, they were referred to as "The Four Seasons of the Confederacy," but recent research suggests that the artist intended each to be a tribute to a major branch of Confederate military service. The plaque above the doorway refers to the three men whose efforts were most responsible for the creation of the murals.
Beautiful and inspiring, the murals are also a reminder of a time when white Americans united around a narrative that our civil war had been fought out of noble impulses on both sides. Trouble realities like the loss of more than 750,000 lives or the unfulfilled promises to more than four million formerly enslaved African Americans were pushed from the collective memory for nearly a century after Appomattox. |