Lincoln Grant Sherman Sherman meets with Grant and Lincoln

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On March 27, 1865 - President Lincoln meets with Generals Grant and Sherman at City Point, Virginia,to discuss the final stage of the Civil War. The meeting was held on the steamer River Queen.
This was the first time the three had ever come together as a group at Grant's request. Grant was preparing an attack on Petersburg which promised to end the siege that had lasted for ten months, and Sherman was driving his army north through the Carolinas to join up with Grant. Lincoln expressed concern that Lee and his army might escape Petersburg and join forces with Joe Johnston and form a new Confederate force which could possibly add months to the war. But Grant and Sherman reassured Lincoln that the end was near. The following day, March 28, Admiral David Dixon Porter, was present in the meeting as well.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-sherman-and-grant-meet
I love this painting, too. The figures of Grant, Lincoln and Porter appear to be based on photographic portraits -- but I don't know where the artist got his model for Sherman. It's so appropriate to have Sherman the famously non-stop talker shown as the one holding forth while all the others listen!
 
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Healy got Grant to sit for a photograph, then did a study upon which he based the later painting. More here:

https://www.newberry.org/pieces-peacemakers
Thanks for that link. What an interesting story -- but how chilling to realize that we'd have lost this awesome painting if Healy had not painted a copy of it!

Question for anyone who knows about these things: If there had not been a second copy, would we not indeed have lost the painting forever? High-quality photographic reproductions of paintings did not come along until long after 1893, n'est-ce pas?

Yikes, it gives me the willies to even think about how we might have lost this wonderful work of art!!
 
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That painting of the meeting on River Queen was done by George P. A. Healy, who also did the famous painting of Lincoln that hangs in the State Dining Room in the White House. Both were done posthumously from studies Healy did before the president's death in April 1865.

George's brother, Thomas Cantwell Healy, was also an artist, but he remained in the South when the war began. Thomas is known for a couple of paintings he did, one of Confederate General Beauregard, and one of the blockade runner Denbigh, running out of Mobile in July 1864. My colleague, Barto Arnold, has located invoices for paints and artists' canvas brought into Mobile on Denbigh, consigned to Thomas C. Healy; perhaps that painting of the ship was done in exchane for the artists' supplies.

His mole is on the wrong side of his face.
 
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