December, 2020
DID HOWARD PYLE GET IT WRONG? AND WHERE ARE HIS PHOTOS?
BONT board member and Civil War blogger John Banks has made some interesting discoveries about the famous Howard Pyle painting of the battle at Shy’s Hill on December 16, 1864. Though the painting remains the best depiction of the charge at Shy’s Hill, it isn’t without controversy.
Above: Photo courtesy of Betsy Haag of the 5th Minnesota Research Group on Facebook. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/5thMNResearch)
Pyle was a Minnesota artist who, in 1906, completed a huge six-by-eight foot oil painting of the Minnesota troops charging the Confederate lines positioned on Shy’s Hill and stretched along what is now Harding Place/Battery Lane. The painting hangs in the governor’s reception room of the Minnesota Capitol building. At the time, Pyle was an internationally-known illustrator and author, with a reputation for carefully researching his subjects in order to provide accurate detail in his illustrations which appeared in thousands of books, magazines and other publications.
What John Banks discovered is that the Pyle’s painting was not met with universal approval by some Federal soldiers who were actually involved in the attack. In interviews with a Minneapolis newspaper in 1906, some said they felt the topography was incorrect, and others were apparently miffed that some regiments were left out of the painting. Before his death in 1911, Pyle defended the accuracy of his rendering. As John Banks found out, Pyle, as usual, had done his homework: he had visited the Nashville battlefield in preparation for the painting, and took a number of large photographs.
Read the details in John’s insightful blog, “Where are Howard Pyle’s ‘Lost’ Nashville battlefield photos?”, by clicking HERE. Click the links below to open PDFs of the two articles in the Nov. 6 and Nov. 19, 1906, editions of the Minneapolis Journal newspaper in which the aging vets took issue with the painting.