01 Work, The Art of War, Captain James Hope's The Aftermath at Bloody Lane, with footnotes

Captain James Hope

The Aftermath at Bloody Lane

Oil on canvas

National Park Service

At the end of the day looking east across Bloody Lane. The center of Lee's defensive line—an 800-yard-long sunken road later called Bloody Lane—as it appeared following the midday battle. By 1:00 p.m., some 5,000 killed and wounded troops of both sides lay along this farm road.  More on this painting

Captain James Hope

Detail; The Aftermath at Bloody Lane

Oil on canvas

National Park Service

James Hope (1818-1892) was born in Scotland and, following the death of his mother, accompanied his father to Canada. At the age of twelve he was orphaned in a cholera outbreak. Soon apprenticed to a wagon maker in Fairhaven, Vermont, he quickly demonstrated that his native intelligence and artistic talent precluded a tradesman’s career. With money saved he attended the Castleton Vermont Seminary for a year and took up portrait painting. He painted in Rutland, Vermont in 1843, but moved to the more lucrative market of Montreal from 1844 to 1846. Upon leaving Montreal, Hope reestablished in Castleton and devoted himself to landscape painting. In 1849 Frederic Church worked for a summer in nearby Clarendon Springs, and it seems likely that he influenced Hope to focus his attentions on New York City. Hope sent a Castleton landscape to the 1849 exhibition of the American Art Union and by 1854 he had work accepted by the National Academy of Design. Thereafter, for more than twenty-five years, he was a frequent contributor to the exhibitions there and to the Brooklyn Art Association. An occasional exhibitor in Boston, he also sent paintings to shows in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Utica, Chicago, and St. Louis.

Hope was among the group of artists who saw active duty in the Civil War, participating in eleven battles. On March 11, 1864, the following appeared in the Newark Daily Advertiser.

Captain James Hope was 43 years old and a member of the 2nd Vermont Infantry. Hope had taken part in a dozen engagements prior to Antietam, but disabled by illness, he was assigned to sideline duties as a scout and mapmaker. He recorded in his sketchbook the battle scenes before his eyes, and then after the battle converted his sketches into a series of five large paintings.

After the war, Hope acquired popularity as a painter of battle scenes. By 1872, however, he built a studio and art gallery in Watkins Glen, New York. There he spent the last twenty years of his life as artist laureate of the water and wind-hewn geologic formations found in the vicinity.

Hope was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design in 1871. More on Captain James Hope

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