The Memorial Art and Architecture of Gettysburg

Abstract

Memorial Art and Architecture of Gettysburg Th e earliest memorials at Gettysburg were marble neoclassicalstyle funerary monuments for the Union dead that were erected in Soldiers’ National Cemetery in the years immediately aft er the war. Th ose were followed, around the twentyfi ft h anniversary of the battle, with granite monuments and realistic representations of soldiers in action (fi g. 2 and foreground of fi g. 3) that commemorate the service of Union survivors as well as the fallen. Th ese were not placed in the cemetery but were sited to mark where troops fought and died on parts of the fi eld preserved by the Gettysburg Battlefi eld Memorial Association, or by Gettysburg National Military Park once it was established in 1895. Th e decades around the turn of the twentieth century witnessed the dedication of additional service memorials for Federal units as well as a few monuments to the Confederate army. Bronze portraits of Union commanders also proliferated. Many of those equestrian and pedestrian fi gures (fi g. 3) were modeled with an invigorated naturalism that was inspired by contemporary French sculptors who trained at the École des BeauxArts in Paris. Th ese BeauxArtsstyle monuments are characterized by dynamic depictions of individuals that are oft en carefully integrated with elaborate pedestals or architectural components such as classical columns, cornices, and moldings.2 By 1900 one monument (fi g. 4) recognized the