Title:
McArdle Companion Battle Documents
Description:
Leather-bound (brown) book with two leather straps and buckles around the width on either end (top strap broken). Surface has decorative design. Printed on the spine of volume two: McArdle Companion Battle Documents, Historical Documents, Volume 2, Battle of San Jacinto.
Description:
Historical Note: Henry Arthur McArdle was born in 1836. A native of Belfast, Ireland, McArdle began the study of art as a child. When McArdle was 14, his parents died, and he emigrated to America with an aunt. He studied art under David A. Woodward at the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts, and in 1860 won the Peabody Prize. During the Civil War, McArdle joined the Confederacy as a draftsman. Later in the war, he joined the staff of General Robert E. Lee as a mapmaker. After the war, he and his wife Jennie moved to Independence, Texas, where he taught art at Baylor Female College (The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor). While working with Hood's Texas Brigade veterans to research his painting: Lee in the Wilderness, McArdle became interested in Texas history. After Baylor Female College moved from Independence, McArdle and his family moved to San Antonio, where he set up a studio and began a series of portraits and action canvases associated with Texas subjects. Dawn at the Alamo and The Battle of San Jacinto remain among the best known of his surviving works. Exhaustively researched, the two paintings attempt to reproduce as accurately as possible the persons, events, accoutrements, and settings of the events they portray. To do this, McArdle amassed a body of documents, photographs, maps, and personal recollections that would later be sold to the state along with the two canvases that now hang in the Texas Senate Chamber. Although he had created the paintings with an eye to their being purchased by the state, McArdle had difficulty obtaining payment, even when he allowed the paintings to be displayed in the capitol building. The two battle paintings were not purchased until nineteen years after his death on February 16, 1908. In 1927 the 40th Legislature approved $25,000 to purchase both paintings and the accumulated research materials. Ruskin McArdle, the son of the artist, had compiled his father's massive research and had it bound into two huge ledgers, one for each of the paintings. Officially titled: McArdle Companion Battle Paintings, they became known simply as the McArdle Notebooks.
Description:
Related Resource: The McArdle Notebooks, Texas State Library and Archives Commission online exhibit.
Identifier:
ATF0042b
Item identifier:
ATF0042b
Collection:
Artifacts collection
Date range of creation:
1876 to 1905
Source:
Texas State Library and Archives Commission, 2005/017
Container information:
Artifact Box 0235 2005/017-2 (OS box)
Subject:
McArdle, Henry Arthur, 1836-1908
Subject:
Battle of San Jacinto
Type:
Image
Type:
Other Documents
Type:
Book
Medium:
Organic material
Citation information:
ATF0042b, Artifacts collection. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
Copyright information:
This image is in the Public Domain under the laws of the United States. The Item and its design depicted in this image may be protected by copyright, patents, trademarks, or other related rights. You are free to use this image in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. Unless expressly stated otherwise, Texas State Library and Archives Commission makes no warranties about the Item and cannot guarantee the accuracy of this Rights Statement. You are responsible for your own use. Please contact the Texas State Library and Archives Commission for more information. You may need to obtain other permissions for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy or moral rights may limit how you may use the material.
Size or duration:
11 in x 16 in x 3 in
Language:
English