Smoke and memory: A Civil War painting endures in Minnesota’s Capitol

If the Minnesota State Capitol were on fire, historic site manager Brian Pease says he’d save one painting first: The Battle of Nashville by Howard Pyle. It shows a Civil War battle from December 1864 involving hundreds of Minnesota soldiers.

Varnish has faded its 119-year-old paint, but it still captures the grim reality of its subject. 

Gun smoke hugs the mucky rained-out cornfield where rows and rows of soldiers stormed, hunched over to avoid the rounds of bullets that shredded American flags some 160 years ago. 

“There is this flowing, this sense of motion, sense of intensity, of what a battle was like for these men,” Pease says as he describes the piece. “The details are impeccable.”

Faces of soldiers covered in sweat and blood scatter the canvas in broken, but advancing, lines. The young men display a range of experiences. Some are mortally wounded. Others reach out to them, still advancing into an uncertain future.

“The Battle of Nashville” is one of six Civil War paintings that hang in the Governor’s reception room at the Capitol.

Pease, who has studied the Capitol’s art for decades, counts “The Battle of Nashville” among his favorites — not just because he once studied the Civil War as a history student.

Civil War memory shapes the Capitol

The Minnesota State Capitol was finished in 1905, only 40 years after the Civil War. The war was fresh in people’s minds, especially the state’s veterans, who had become politicians, governors and business leaders. 

The perspectives of these leaders influenced architect Cass Gilbert as he made decisions about the art, layout and themes of the Capitol. For the Governor’s reception room, they emphasized the importance of reflecting Minnesota’s history.

“It’s an impressive room in itself, because you have beautiful Minnesota white oak, dark stained with plaster decorations that talk about North Stars and wheat and corn, things that are important parts of Minnesota's history and agriculture and industry,” Pease said. 

Shortly before building the Minnesota Capitol, Gilbert was hired to build the U.S. Custom House, and while living in New York, he had the opportunity to “rub elbows” with major artists of the early 20th century, like Edwin Blashfield and Pyle — many of whom Gilbert first turned to when filling the walls of the Capitol. 

Gilbert had one requirement for the artists: they had to do research. Look at the limited photos of the war, visit battlefields and talk to the veterans. The paintings had to feel real. 

Pyle, known for his vivid imagination, found it easy to immerse himself. He is quoted as saying, “I would often have to step outside of my studio to clear my lungs of the smoke and the powder,” says Pease. 

Uncovering the original vision

In the 1930s, the government hired artists to restore the works — but some made creative changes. They altered skies, added leaves and painted over clouds. A 2010s restoration project aimed to return them to their original state.

Conservators used blacklight to detect newer paint, then carefully chipped away at the overpainting.

“They had to go back with bone folders or little devices with not a real sharp edge, but a nice enough straight edge to chip away inch by inch, all that non-original art,” Pease said.

The same restoration effort also relocated two paintings originally displayed in the Governor’s reception room. “Father Hennepin at the Falls of St. Anthony” and “Treaty of Traverse des Sioux” had once hung opposite each other.

They were moved to a different public viewing area with interpretative information as the paintings insensitively depict the Native and Indigenous people who were pushed from their land when Minnesota became a state. 

“It’s a really, really sad part of our state’s past and story that needs to be told,” Pease said. “In 1905 that painting, for instance, was seen as an important step to us becoming a state, until we could acquire land from the Native Americans, we couldn’t move in there, because that’s not federal property. And so it was a big boon to make Minnesota prosperous agriculturally, but at the cost of a group of people's life in Minnesota.”

Legacy and impact a century later

We don’t know exactly what Pyle hoped for with “The Battle of Nashville,” but commemorating Minnesota’s role in the Civil War was clearly important to both him and Gilbert.

“To them, this is the story that kind of led the top of the fold of the newspaper ‘Civil War veterans remembered in the state Capitol in big paintings.’ And so I think that’s a big part of that legacy,” Pease said. 

Many historians, tourists and students have visited the painting. And outside of the capitol, its thumbnail has graced the covers and pages of countless U.S. history textbooks. 

Even now as we near the 160th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, Pease believes the painting serves a timeless meaning.  

“A 100 years from now, sixth graders from northern Minnesota are from the towns that these folks were from, can come and see these paintings and hear that story,” he said.

For Pease, that lasting story is exactly why, if he had to choose just one, this would be the painting he’d save.

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