William D. Washington (1833–1870)
The Burial of Latané, c. 1864
Oil on canvas
Height: 38 in (96.5 cm); Width: 48 in (121.9 cm)
The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
In June 1862, twenty-nine-year-old Captain William Latané of the 9th Virginia Cavalry was the only Confederate killed during J. E. B. Stuart’s famous ride around Union general McClellan’s army during the Peninsula Campaign. After Latané’s death at Old Church in Hanover County, his brother John Latané removed the body to the Westwood plantation two miles away. The plantation’s white men were all away serving the Confederate army, but Mrs. William Spencer Roane Brockenbrough, the mistress of the house, assured John Latané that his brother’s remains would be rendered proper care and a Christian burial. The next day, slaves from Westwood and the neighboring family plantation of Summer Hill prepared the body and constructed a coffin. According to the story that circulated at the time, Mrs. Brockenbrough sent one of the slaves to retrieve the family minister, but Union pickets hindered his arrival. Without any men to assist them, the women performed the funeral themselves. Mrs. Brockenbrough’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Willoughby Newton, read the service while the white children and slaves watched. More on Latané’s Interment
William Dickinson Washington (October 7, 1833 – December 1, 1870) was an American painter and teacher of art. He is most famous for his painting The Burial of Latané (See below), which became a symbol of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy in the years following the American Civil War, and for the work he did in establishing the fine arts program of the Virginia Military Institute.
Long thought to have been born in Snickersville in Loudoun County, the child of John Perrin Washington and Hannah Fairfax Whiting. The boy was born with a congenital deformity of his left foot, and walked with a limp his whole life; he also suffered greatly from numerous childhood ailments.
Long thought to have been born in Snickersville in Loudoun County, the child of John Perrin Washington and Hannah Fairfax Whiting. The boy was born with a congenital deformity of his left foot, and walked with a limp his whole life; he also suffered greatly from numerous childhood ailments.
John Washington secured a job with the United States Post Office in Washington, D.C., and his family moved to that town in 1834. The younger Washington began his own career at the Patent Office, working there for some years as a draughtsman. He studied painting with Emmanuel Leutze during his time in Washington. He also pursued further study in Düsseldorf, also with Leutze. His recommendation to travel there was supported by both of Virginia's senators, James Murray Mason and Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, who urged Secretary of State Edward Everett to appoint him a dispatch bearer in Europe to provide him with funds for the journey. The Secretary agreed, and Washington began his duties at Calais upon landing there on May 16, 1853. He continued to Germany and began studies under Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow.
While in Germany Washington began his career as a history painter with pieces such as Entrance to a Castle, The Student, and Commencement of the Huguenot War (See below); this last he sent home for exhibition, prompting a favorable notice in the Daily National Intelligencer. The painting was also shown in Philadelphia, where it met with less glowing reviews.
William de Hartburn Washington (1833 - 1870)
THE ATTIC PHILOSOPHERS, c. 1861
Oil on canvas
18 by 26 in. 45.7 by 66 cm
Private collection
While in Germany Washington began his career as a history painter with pieces such as Entrance to a Castle, The Student, and Commencement of the Huguenot War (See below); this last he sent home for exhibition, prompting a favorable notice in the Daily National Intelligencer. The painting was also shown in Philadelphia, where it met with less glowing reviews.
William D. Washington (1833–1870)
Attack on the Huguenots, c. 1855
Oil on canvas
63 x 79 inches.
Virginia Military Institute
It was painted in 1855 while Washington was studying in Dusseldorf, Germany. It depicts the 1562 massacre by Duke Francis de Guise of about 100 Huguenots attending a worship service in a barn located in Wassy, France. Washington was later on the faculty at VMI. More on this painting
Upon his return to the District, Washington became deeply involved in the local artistic community; he entered work in the first exhibition of the Washington Art Association, and later served as its director and vice president. He also became acquainted with William Wilson Corcoran, who would later appoint him a member of the Council of the National Gallery and School of Art. Washington would remain in the District of Columbia until 1861.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Washington traveled to Richmond, Virginia, and offered his services to Robert E. Lee; he was rejected due to the deformity of his foot, although he was briefly appointed to the Virginia State Engineers Office. There he drew a number of redoubts and fortifications, drawings from which he would later produce paintings.
William D. Washington
Landscape, ca. 1869
Oil on canvas
4 x 5 inches proof
Virginia Military Institute
William D. Washington, ca. 1869
Old Mill, c. 1869-1870
Rockbridge County, Virginia
Oil on canvas
4 x 5 inches proof
Virginia Military Institute Archives
Washington served as a staff officer for brief stretches during the war, under the command of John B. Floyd; while on duty he completed a number of sketches of mountain and battle scenes, some of which he would later translate into finished canvases. Ill health kept him in Richmond for the duration of the war, however, and it was during this time that he created two of his most important paintings, The Burial of Latané (See above) and Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, Virginia (See below). The former, depicting an incident in the war, was based on a popular poem by John Reuben Thompson.
William D. Washington
Stonewall Jackson Entering Winchester, c. 1865
"Stonewall" received a hero's welcome upon his triumphant arrival in the contested city.
Oil on canvas
20.3 x150.3 cm.
Valentine Museum Library, Richmond, Virginia
This painting by William C. Washington, Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, shows the dashing Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson saving the Virginia town from Union capture in 1862. Jackson and other Confederate generals evoked fierce loyalty to the Confederacy. Unfortunately, by the time this victory was commemorated, Jackson himself was dead, killed by friendly fire at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1863.
The commotion in Winchester also held up Jackson’s men. Delighted residents of Winchester thronged their Confederate heroes, also making pursuit challenging, and while most did try to pursue their beaten foe, they were unsuccessful, and Jackson ordered a halt after just a few miles. More on this painting
At the end of the war Washington fled to England, working there between 1865 and 1866; returning to the United States, he settled in New York City, operating a studio there from 1866 until 1869 and submitting a number of works to the National Academy of Design, including The Reverend Dr. Morgan Administering the Sacrament of Baptism in Grace Church. At some point during this time he also worked in West Virginia. In July 1869, Washington was offered a teaching post at the Virginia Military Institute, where he would remain, with one interruption, until his death some eighteen months later.
William D. Washington, American, 1834 - 1870
The Last Touch, c. 1866
Oil on canvas
24 × 21 in. (60.96 × 53.34 cm)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia
Seated before his canvas, an artist gauges the effect of the last touch of pigment while his muse stands behind him. The pair is engulfed by a studio of props suggestive of the international tastes of a European-trained painter—a point reiterated by his resplendent robe and slippers.
When submitting The Last Touch for exhibition at the prestigious National Academy of Design in 1866, he found himself in the awkward position of trying to rejoin an American art market based in New York as a southern artist. His diplomatic choice was to picture a universal subject with broad appeal: the artist at work. More on this painting
William D. Washington, American, 1834 - 1870
Lady Clara de Clare, ca. 1869
Oil on canvas
24 3/8 × 19 3/8 in. (61.91 × 49.21 cm)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia
William D. Washington’s Lady Clara de Clare is inspired by Marmion, an 1808 epic poem by Sir Walter Scott set in the Court of Henry VIII. The richly detailed scene comes from the second canto in which Lady Clara, “young and fair,” escapes the nefarious designs of Marmion by taking refuge in the convent of Saint Hilda on the Island of Lindisfarne.
While the Gothic Revival subject matter may seem arcane for a Richmond-based painter, Scott’s courtly idylls of sentimental feudalism resonated with the southern planter class in the antebellum period. During and after the Civil War, the tales’ “twilight-of-a-nobility” theme and chivalric emphasis on the chastity and honor of women helped redefine patrician southern identity and loss. Mark Twain notes Scott’s “large hand in making southern character,” arguing “that he is in great measure responsible for the war.” More on this painting
During his short time in Lexington, Washington managed to achieve a great deal. He was commissioned by the Institute's Superintendent, Francis H. Smith,to paint posthumous portraits of alumni and faculty who had died in battle during the Civil War. Among the subjects he so commemorated were: George S. Patton, Sr., Waller T. Patton, Robert E. Rodes, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, Joseph W. Latimer, Samuel Garland.
William D. Washington
House Mountain and VMI faculty quarters, ca. 1869
Commandant's quarters in ruins after the Civil War, with House Mountain in the background
Oil on canvas
Virginia Military Institute Archives
He also contributed a portrait of the then-still-living Robert E. Lee to the gallery. The artist had not known any of these men personally, and thus had to rely on photographs and descriptions from their colleagues to complete their likenesses. Many of Washington's portraits are still on display in Preston Library on the VMI campus. Also in the Institute's collections are a number of landscapes and genre paintings he completed after poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Washington was also active in promoting the Institute's cultural life; he founded an art gallery on campus, for which he secured funding from William Wilson Corcoran, and taught fine arts to those students who desired such instruction.
Smith had hoped to make Washington a full-time member of the Institute's faculty as chairman of the Division of Fine Arts, but the position was not forthcoming due to a lack of funds; the artist was not named to the post until June 1869. Full funding had still not been received a year later, and Washington left Lexington for the District of Columbia, in search of portrait commissions. Soon he traveled to Hot Springs, Virginia; his health was deteriorating, and he wished to seek a cure in the waters there.
Washington returned to Lexington in October 1870 in the hopes that his position might be resolved, but he died suddenly on December 1 of that year. He was the first member of the Institute's faculty to die in office, and was greatly mourned across the campus. Washington was interred in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Lexington; classes at the Institute were suspended as a mark of honor until after his burial, and a battalion of cadets escorted the coffin to the grave during the funeral.
Most of Washington's surviving paintings are held at the Virginia Military Institute, but a few have made their way into various museum collections, including those of the Morris Museum of Art[12] and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; in addition, a portrait of John Marshall, which he painted for the Fauquier County Courthouse in Warrenton, Virginia, is still hanging there today. Prints of The Burial of Latané were also popular, and some may still be found in various collections. Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, Virginia is currently owned by the Valentine Museum in Richmond. More on William D. Washington
William D. Washington
Elaine, ca. 1869
Oil on canvas
4 x 5 inches proof
Virginia Military Institute Archives
"Elaine", based on Tennyson's poem. Mary Maury, the daughter of Matthew Fontaine Maury, posed for this painting.
Smith had hoped to make Washington a full-time member of the Institute's faculty as chairman of the Division of Fine Arts, but the position was not forthcoming due to a lack of funds; the artist was not named to the post until June 1869. Full funding had still not been received a year later, and Washington left Lexington for the District of Columbia, in search of portrait commissions. Soon he traveled to Hot Springs, Virginia; his health was deteriorating, and he wished to seek a cure in the waters there.
Washington returned to Lexington in October 1870 in the hopes that his position might be resolved, but he died suddenly on December 1 of that year. He was the first member of the Institute's faculty to die in office, and was greatly mourned across the campus. Washington was interred in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Lexington; classes at the Institute were suspended as a mark of honor until after his burial, and a battalion of cadets escorted the coffin to the grave during the funeral.
Most of Washington's surviving paintings are held at the Virginia Military Institute, but a few have made their way into various museum collections, including those of the Morris Museum of Art[12] and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; in addition, a portrait of John Marshall, which he painted for the Fauquier County Courthouse in Warrenton, Virginia, is still hanging there today. Prints of The Burial of Latané were also popular, and some may still be found in various collections. Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, Virginia is currently owned by the Valentine Museum in Richmond. More on William D. Washington
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