How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

[PetePaolillo]

I just had a great visit up to Charleston recently and was very pleasantly surprised by a picture I snapped when I went home and compared it to a Harpers weekly newspaper that I found while doing a search, unrelated to what I found. The first picture I took on Sunday 3/8/10 was shot near White Point Gardens looking down towards Rainbow Row.

The sketch is titled
"THE BATTERY OR PARK PROMENADE AT CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, DURING THE BOMBARDMENT OF FORT SUMTER", published in "Harper's Weekly" May 1861

It just shows you how the artists paid great attention to detail when they made their sketches. They were the Photographs of their time. I though it was good enough to share. I hope someone likes this.

[Spinster]

Re: How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

A similarly impressive effect is found with the swearing in of Jefferson Davis, and the current facade of the the Alabama State Capitol.

Yet another thing I can't do any good on posting from a phone............

[Ross L. Lamoreaux]

Re: How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

Something to remember or note is that many of those periodicals used photographs as the basis for the engravings that were printed in them. That is yet another reason why the detail is often great.

[yeoman]

Re: How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

Sir and ma'am, from another thread, if I may quote. "At a time when shutter speed of cameras was slow to capture action, the public's only glimpse of the action came from the sketch artists."

http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/forum/showthread.php?27388-sketches-and-drawings&p=1746133post174613

Some of the artists known to us, Alfred Waud, Edwin Forbes, Francis Schell...all the lesser known and unknown did much of their work in the moment. The sight's, sounds...the smell of the day is in their work, the result of their personal experience.
As a diary or journal is much more in touch to the moment than a collected "history" of an event...so to these sketches and drawings as compared to photographs.

The photographs we study are the primary source...,my 2 cents, these artists work is that instant in time we rarely see.

Edwin Forbes, "My Studio"


Thanks for the consideration, Mel Hadden.

[Hank Trent]

Re: How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

Edwin Forbes, "My Studio"

Is that a makeshift bootscraper he's rigged up, in the lower right corner? March would have been muddy. That's something you don't see at events.

It would also have been an excellent way to trip people coming along the front of his tent in the dark. :)

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[yeoman]

Re: How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

Sir, good eye on the boot scrapper...,viewing several images from City Point Va., seems the cabins at Grants headquaters also had them in place.

General J.A.Rawlins, wife and child.

Sketch by A.R.Waud, Grants headquarters, City Point Va.

[Remember1864]

Re: How accurate are those Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie sketches?

Yes indeed. Those City Point views are spot on. And today, (2010), the NPS has even taken time to recreate "Grant's bootscraper". I gave tours as a seasonal at PNB for two years then ran my own guided tour business visiting City Point many times in 10 years. But, I have NEVER seen or taken note of this sketch. Waud's detail is impressive. Look at the porch in the distance. (Appomattox Manor) That's vine creeping around and over the Feds standing there. Based on period photographic images, we know this to be accurate. BUT, did anyone notice the difference in placement of "ye olde boot scraper" in the sketch versus the photo with Rawlings? I believe that's 'cause Rawlings is shot standing in front of "his" cabin which was next to Grant's. (And closer to the Eppes house.)

Good stuff, this.