Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 68

Price Realized: $ 48,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Robertson, [John Roy?] Oil painting of Robert E. Lee. 25 x 21 1/2 inches sight size, in period frame; lined, some restoration visible under black light; signed "Robertson, 1863." Np, 1863
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Additional Details

Robert E. Lee was kept busy as the leader of the Confederate States Army, and only sat for one known formal portrait session in the first three years of the Confederacy, resulting in a pair of photographs generally attributed to Minnis and Cowell of Richmond in 1862. This painting is based upon the better-known of these photographs, in which Lee's lapels are distinctively tucked under his buttons to keep them in place. However, Robertson's wartime portrait softens some of the crags in Lee's face and redirects his gaze toward the viewer. The uniform is a darker shade than the standard Confederate gray with a slightly bluish cast, an understandable mistake if the painter was working in Baltimore from a black and white photograph. The artist has also taken the liberty of encircling Lee's three-star insignia with a wreath, making it a proper Confederate general's insignia, although General Lee always wore a wreathless colonel's insignia. See Meredith, The Face of Robert E. Lee, revised edition, pages 30-31.
The artist J. Roy Robertson was apparently born in Scotland or Nova Scotia, studied art in Europe, and then settled in Baltimore in the late 1850s. When the Civil War broke out, he shared the strong Confederate sympathies of many Baltimore residents. His three known paintings from this period are an official portrait of Jefferson Davis thought to have been painted at the Executive Mansion in Richmond, and portraits of the Confederate artists Frederick and Adalbert Volck. After the war, Robertson seems to have lived briefly in Europe before settling down as an art teacher in Chicago and New York through at least 1890. No birth or death record has been found. A full chronology of his known work and residences is available upon request.