Historic moment depicted in Kunstler work

By Darrell Laurant
Lynchburg News & Advance
May 6, 2007

Mort Kunstler calls his latest painting, set in Lynchburg, “one of the best I’ve ever done.”

Which is saying something, because the New York-based artist is regarded as one of the premier painters of history in the world - especially when it comes to the Civil War, his specialty for the past few decades.

“Mort Kunstler is the foremost Civil War artist of our time, if not of all time,” says Virginia Tech professor James I. Robertson Jr., author of a Stonewall Jackson biography and generally regarded one of America’s Civil War gurus.

The work that Kunstler will unveil in Lynchburg on May 11 is called “Going Home,” and it depicts one of the more poignant moments in Lynchburg history - the final journey of Stonewall Jackson’s body from the Ninth Street terminus of the James River & Kanahwa Canal west to his burial in Lexington.

“The scene is very meaningful to me,” Kunstler said. “It reconstructs a remarkable, but little-known historic event, and it also attracted me with its unusual artistic elements.”

Eventually. At first, Kunstler admitted in a recent telephone conversation, he wasn’t that excited about the idea when it was suggested to him several years ago.

“Painting a funeral procession just didn’t seem that interesting to me,” he said, “but I decided to go down there and see if I could make it work.”

What he found were two surviving structures - the old Ninth Street bridge and the Amazement Square building - that dated back before the Civil War and had strong potential as backdrop features. Then he saw a model of the packet boat Marshall, the craft that gave Jackson his last ride, and he was sold.

“Col. Keith Gibson, the director of the museum at VMI, really helped me out a lot,” Kunstler said. “He’s the one who let me borrow the model of the boat.”

Jackson was accidentally but seriously wounded by his own troops at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, and died eight days later. A state funeral was held for him in Richmond, after which his coffin and its accompanying brigade of Confederate soldiers went by train to Lynchburg. There, on May 13, 1863, the coffin was placed on the Marshall, which now sits decaying in Riverside Park (more about that later).

“The procession set out up the canal about 10 o’clock that evening,” said Kunstler, “and it was illuminated by torch light and lanterns. That gave me a historical scene with a wonderful combination of light - the cool, soft moonlight and the warm, glowing light of torches and lanterns.”

To Kunstler, a painting is not just a work of art, but a work of historic scholarship.

“I really feel an obligation to get it right,” he said.

In the case of “Going Home,” however, he had more leeway than usual. Incredibly, he was never able to find any sort of visual depiction of the event.

“That meant I had to re-create it from written descriptions,” Kunstler said. “I know that the governor was there, and I know some of the other people who were present. I know how many soldiers were part of the cortege, and that there were three horses attached to the packet boat.

“I couldn’t figure out the three horses at first, until I realized one of them was supposed to serve as a brake when it came time for the packet boat to stop.”

At one point, Kunstler included a 19th-century locomotive in his painting, until he was told that a train would not be visible from that perspective.

“So I painted it out,” he said.

The artist is the second well-known Kunstler to come to town (famed civil rights attorney William Kunstler defended a case here in the early 1970s), and the Lynchburg Historical Society plans to build a whole weekend out of his visit.

The painting will be unveiled at a dinner on May 11 at the Arthur DeMoss Center at Liberty University. Tickets for the 6:30 p.m. event are $55, and proceeds will go toward the renovation of the Marshall and the Civil War Chaplain’s Museum at Liberty.

On May 12, Kunstler and Civil War author Rod Gragg will be at the Depot Plaza signing prints and books. There will be children’s activities at nearby Amazement Square and a living history encampment at Riverfront Park.

At 1:30 p.m. Saturday, according to Lynchburg Historic Foundation president Sally Schneider, “there will be a funeral procession through town following the footsteps of the procession May 13, 1863. At Bailey Spencer Hardware on Main, the site of the First Presbyterian Church in 1863, part of the funeral sermon will be read. At the end of the procession there will be cannon fire and a 21-gun salute.

“On May 13 there will be a period church service at the encampment.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Kunstler. “I always enjoy traveling to Virginia. I was born in Brooklyn, but I always tell people down there that it was South Brooklyn.”