Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")

Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")

William Sartain

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published three years after the death of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, this print commemorates one of the Confederacy’s most gifted generals. Jackson served under Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia and was widely mourned when he succumbed to pneumonia on May 10, 1863, after being gravely wounded in the dark by soldiers from his own side at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Jackson is shown with his second wife, Mary Anna Morrison, and their daughter, Julia Laura, born in November 1862. The expansive table between husband and wife indicates the separation imposed by his death, while the bible under his right hand signifies the general’s faith—as a devout Presbyterian, he declared that he felt as safe on the battlefield as he did in bed and tried to avoid fighting on Sundays. Sitting near her father’s knee, Julia Laura looks about two and a half, her age at the time the print was published. On the wall behind, a portrait of Lee, Jackson’s revered commander, and busts of the prominent Southerners John C. Calhoun and George Washington, represent Jackson’s earthly allegiances.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson and His Family ("Stonewall Jackson")

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.