[Rarebooks] Artist who painted R.E. Lee, W.T. Sherman, Bryant, Johnson, etc...

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

FRANK BUCHSER. MEIN LEBEN UND STREBEN IN AMERIKA.
Begegnungen und Bekenntnisse eines Schweizer Malers 1866-1871.

Buchser, Frank (& Gottfried Walchli).
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

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JOSLIN HALL RARE BOOKS, ABAA
Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

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