To stay informed about Mort Künstler’s latest releases and upcoming shows, please fill out our Membership Form. Membership will provide you with email notification when news occurs.

By Jim Nesbitt
South Carolina Bureau Chief

The talented left hand of Civil War artist Mort Künstler got a workout during a recent visit to Southside Gallery, when more than 500 fans crowded the Pine Log Road showroom to buy his prints and books and patiently wait for an autograph.

Flanked by gray-clad re-enactors from the local Brig. Gen. Barnard E. Bee Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Mr. Künstler, 73, sat and greeted his fans for four hours on a cold, drizzly Saturday.

A well-known Civil War artist, Mr. Künstler mixes battle scenes of major clashes with more intimate portraits of Union and Confederate leaders caught in a small moment of history unfamiliar to many.

At shows such as the Nov. 27 event at Southside Gallery, Mr. Künstler receives feedback about his evocative work.

"What I pick up on, the feeling I get, is that I am portraying things they've never seen before, and they feel that I've taken them there," he said.

In some cases, the impact of Mr. Künstler's paintings can be life-changing.

"I've had people who've said to me they were never that interested in the Civil War until they saw one of my paintings. They got interested, and now a son is studying history at a university," he said. "It's quite a thrill to find your work has had this kind of effect on people."

While Civil War re-enactors try to immerse themselves in a 19th century lifestyle of soldiers, and his colleagues concentrate on the furious carnage at The Mule Shoe, The Hornet's Nest of The Bloody Angle, Mr. Kunstler has outpaced the pack by focusing his artist's eye on the footnotes of the war's epic narrative.

Consider his present work-in-progress. It is a canvas that depicts Confederate cavalry leader Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart helping his wife out of a carriage to attend a ball at the town hall of Culpepper [sic], Va., in June 1863, just a few weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg.

The street scene doesn't re-create the fire and smoke of battle, but it does frame the contradictory characteristics of Stuart - a warrior, tactician and gold-braided dandy just as famous for his love of music and dance as his eye for women.

"There were an awful lot of guys painting Civil War paintings, but they were primarily battle scenes," Mr. Kunstler said. "I started looking for events that hadn't been done before. Either they hadn't been done before or they were done inaccurately.

After gaining a measure of fame as the official artist of the first space shuttle Columbia launch, a Western artist and the creator of movie posters for Hollywood blockbusters such as The Poseidon Adventure, Mr. Kunstler turned his attention to the Civil War in 1988 with The High Water Mark, which shows the final moments of the doomed Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.

As he started researching the war's major battles and figures, his mind sparked with possibilities.

"My God, there was a whole world out there that nobody has ever seen, nobody has ever painted," he said.

"For me to discover a field where there were so many stories, so many subjects, was very exciting."

Although he's painted his share of battle scenes, Mr. Kunstler said his work veered toward street scenes and vignettes that captured the smaller moments of the war. One of his most popular prints, Until We Meet Again, shows Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson bidding his wife farewell at the end of her stay at his headquarters in Winchester, Va.

This combination of battle scenes and small vignettes has made Mr. Kunstler a popular Civil War artist whose prints sell out almost as soon as they're released, said Tom Abbott, the owner of Southside Gallery.

Mr. Künstler's latest winter scene, Confederate Crossing, which shows confederate cavalry leader Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest leading his troops across the Duck River in Tennessee in 1864, sold out within days.

The artist has been praised by Civil War historians, such as Pulitzer Prize winner James McPherson, for being a stickler for historical accuracy. Mr. Künstler also wins plaudits for capturing the essence of Civil War leaders, their aura of command and the feel of warfare in that era. "There are artists who can capture that essence and aura and there are artists who, while technically competent, can't," Mr. Abbott said.

Mr. Abbott has favorite touches that Mr. Kunstler uses to highlight the central figure of his paintings-usually by framing them in light from a torch, a window or a patch of bright sky. In The Last Council at Chancellorsville, Jackson, Stuart and Confederate commander Gen. Robert E. Lee are bathed in the glow of a campfire as they study a map spread before them on the ground.

Mr. Künstler's new book, The Civil War Art of Mort Künstler, is a compilation of all his paintings set in the war's chronological order. It also includes captions written by historians such as Mr. McPherson and James I. Robertson, a prominent Civil War scholar.

Mr. Kunstler hasn't lost his competitive edge.

"Whatever I paint, I want it to be the best painting of that event," he said.

Return to Recent News