Beschreibung:

American, (1837 -1911). Watercolor on stiff wove paper, 8.25 x 5.5." Signed lower right and titled in manuscript pen "The Destruction of Union Supply trains at MANASSAS JUNCTION by Jackson and Stuart's Cavlary CSA Augst 28th 1862. Capture of 11th NY Battery. Stores + 7 full trains and 10 locomotives run off the track and burnt. Arrival of 3rd Corps at noon." Sneden enlisted at age 24 as a private in the 40th New York in 1861, and became a draftsmen and topographic engineer in 1862. He served in the Peninsula Campaign, and following his duty, went to Washington, and was later captured by John S. Mosby at Brandy Station and held in a number of southern prisons, including Libby in Richmond, and Andersonville, in Georgia. After his parole in 1864, he worked for a while as an architect before dying in 1911 at the New York State Soldiers and Sailors Home in Bath, New York. It was not until the mid-1990s that Sneden's real accomplishment and life's work come to light. During the war he apparently kept detailed diaries and made a number of sketches which he assembled into an album. Using these as inspiration, during the 1870s-90s, he produced a 6000-page manuscript memoir of his service, illustrated with hundreds of original watercolors of scenes from the Virginia Theater, POW camps and more. The collection was ultimately purchased by the Virginia Historical Society, and not long afterwards Simon and Schuster purchased the publication rights for the memoir for a reported $355,000. The subsequent book "Eye of the Storm. A Civil War Odyssey" (C.F. Bryan, Jr. and N. D. Lankford, editors) The Free Press, New York, was published in 2000. While the vast majority of Sneden's works are curated at the Virginia Historical Society, at least five paintings have been located in the collections of the New York Historical Society, and several of his maps are curated at the Library of Congress and the National Archives. Sneden made multiple copies of some of his works; he made at least a half-dozen or so of Andersonville, for example. A variant of this watercolor is pictured in "EYE OF THE STORM (p 119). The present painting is shows far more detail, however, is alive with action. Provenance: Found in a Civil War book from an Albany, New York collection assembled during the 1950s. The painting was brought to "The Antiques Roadshow" in Tuscon, Arizona where it was appraised by Don Cresswell of the Philadelphia Print Shop. An exceptional watercolor, and a rare opportunity to acquire what is almost certainly the only known example of Sneden's work not in institutional hands. Condition:EXC, with vivid, bright colors.