[Rarebooks] fs: He painted Robert E. Lee and Sherman...

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

[Buchser]  Buchser, Frank (& Gottfried Walchli). FRANK BUCHSER. Mein Leben
und Streben in Amerika. Begegnungen und Bekenntnisse eines Schweizer
Malers 1866-1871. Zurich / Leipzig; Orell Fussli Verlag: 1942. Frank
Buchser, a prominent Swiss portrait painter, spent 1866 to 1871 in the
United States. Generals W.T. Sherman, Robert E. Lee and Nathaniel P.
Banks, as well as politicians Andrew Johnson, William Cullen Bryant, and
William H. Seward (for whom he conceived a great antipathy and contempt)
were all subjects of his brush and his diaries, for he kept copious notes
of his travels and impressions. Meredith ("The Face of Robert E. Lee in
Life and Legend", 1947) notes that Buchser was -

"almost fiercely independent in forming his opinions, he was a man of warm
sympathies and strong dislikes".

He spent three weeks in September and October, 1869 painting Robert E.
Lee, and the likeness has long been praised for the air of vigor, vitality
and aggressiveness it radiates, far from what most photos of Lee at that
juncture in his life, when he was very sick, show. The secret is that as
Buchser worked on Lee's head he gradually drew his subject out on the
topic of Virginia's secession from the Union. Day after day he talked to
Lee until -

"the General relaxed his reserve; soon he was talking freely and in such
an intensity of earnestness that his role as model was quite forgotten...
old fires had risen and broken through, and the artist succeeded in
capturing their glow on his canvas" (Meredith).

Of further interest, although this book retains the original German of
Buchser's notes and diaries, the chapter on his time with Lee contains the
text of a letter he wrote an American friend about the experience, in
English. The rest of the text, though it is in German, contains much
interesting material about the artist's travels through New York,
Washington, Virginia and the West. Hardcover. 6.5"x9", 131 pages, 17 b/w
plates, several line illustrations in the text; light wear, a newspaper
clipping set in with light offsetting. [03516] $150.00



Ilustrations-
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