Press

ALBANY, N.Y. -
Eyewitness accounts and images from the Civil War diary of Union soldier and Confederate prisoner of war Robert Knox Sneden will go on display at the New York State Museum from October 5 through December 31.
"Eye of the Storm: The Civil War Drawings of Robert Sneden," organized by the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia, showcases nearly 100 watercolors, maps, and excerpts from Sneden's diary that capture, in vivid detail, the brutality of war and the horrors of imprisonment, including at Andersonville. The entire Sneden collection -- a 5,000-page memoir and 1,000 watercolors -- represents the largest collection of Civil War art ever produced by a single soldier or sailor. Many of the images are the only known depictions of places and events, especially those of the inside of Confederate prison camps.

The current new nationwide tour of the exhibition, which begins at the New York State Museum, contains 90 small watercolors from the illustrated memoir, many exhibited publicly for the first time. In addition, the state museum is delving into its own collection of Civil War art, and is exhibiting drawings by Edward Lamson Henry and watercolors by John G. Fay.
Henry, who was one of the country's most popular and prolific genre artists at the end of the 19th century, served briefly as a captain's clerk aboard a Union quartermaster's supply transport on the James River in Virginia. In a series of penciled "War Sketches" and pastel crayon studies he documented behind-the-lines scenes of a federal occupation force during the siege of Petersburg. His images of the confiscated, fortified plantation houses of Westover and Berkeley combine, with studies of the sprawling Union supply depot at City Point, to chronicle a non-combat side of soldiering important to a fuller understanding of the events of the period.

Six watercolors by Captain John G. Fay of Albany's Third Regiment, New York Infantry are also
included. Fay saw and recorded action along the same area of the James River that E.L. Henry depicted.
The "Eye of the Storm" collection of Civil War soldier art is unrivaled in every respect,
according to Dr. Charles F. Bryan, Jr., CEO and director of the Virginia Historical Society. Never before
have we been invited into the heart and soul of such an important historical event as Sneden does through his personal memoir, says Bryan. The collection is also the basis for the best-selling books, "Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey" (The Free Press, 2000) and "Images from the Storm" (The Free Press, 2001).
Robert Knox Sneden was born in Nova Scotia in 1832, the great-grandson of a loyalist who fled New York at the end of the American Revolution. When he was 18 years old he moved with his parents and siblings to New York City, where he began training for a career in architecture and engineering, two professions in great demand in the teeming metropolis. At the outbreak of the Civil War, his business address was listed as 50 Wall Street, in the heart of the city's financial and commercial district.

Shortly after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, Sneden was appointed civilian assistant
quartermaster of the newly formed 40th New York Volunteers or Mozart Regiment, named by Mayor Fernando Wood to recognize the Mozart Hall political faction of the city's Democratic Party. Sneden outfitted the 40th during its training in Yonkers and watched as the unit left for Washington in July 1861. By September, Sneden was formally enlisted in the 40th, first serving as a soldier, drilling, going out on picket, and seeing a few skirmishes. In 1862, Sneden parlayed his talent for sketching into a coveted appointment as a mapmaker at corps headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.

For nearly two years, Sneden was in a singular position to see many of the Civil War's greatest campaigns firsthand, including the Peninsula Campaign and the vicious fighting of the Seven Days, as well as the second battle of Bull Run. On the evening of November 26, 1863, Sneden was captured by the celebrated Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby. Pistol-whipped and wounded, Sneden was first led to prison in Richmond, Virginia. Held in some of the worst and most infamous Confederate prisons of the war, Sneden continued to document his experience. He hid his dramatic pencil sketches in his shoes or sewed them in his coat and hat so that prison guards would not take them. His depictions of captivity are disturbing and detailed, showing scenes of hunger, fear, and desperation.

Sneden returned to Brooklyn at Christmastime 1864 only to find that he had been presumed missing or dead. Permanently disabled by his 13 months in prison, he used his time to turn his pencil sketches into watercolors. Although Sneden initially sketched many of his drawings while he was in battle, most were put into a finished state after the fighting stopped. Sneden devoted the decades after the war to creating a vast illustrated memoir documenting, in minute detail, the most significant experiences of his life. He died on September 18, 1918 at the Soldier's and Sailor's Home in Bath, New York. Unmarried and without children, he once told a local historian, "I leave no posterity, but a good war record."
In 1994, four tattered scrapbook albums, containing some 500 vivid Civil War watercolor
drawings and maps by Union soldier Robert Knox Sneden, were consigned to an art dealer who
specializes in southern works. The dealer approached the Virginia Historical Society, whose curators
were curious, but skeptical. Upon examining the sketches, the curators realized they were looking at a remarkable collection of artwork that had dropped from sight for many decades, languishing in a Connecticut bank vault since the Great Depression.

The Virginia Historical Society acquired the collection, and began to look into sketchy details of Sneden's life, which eventually led to contact with the great-grandson of Robert Sneden's brother, who
lived in upstate New York. It turned out that he was in possession of five volumes of an illustrated
diary/memoir, stored for years in a mini-rental bin in Arizona. The 5,000-page memoir, containing hundreds more watercolors, was purchased by the Virginia Historical Society, which initiated a two-year tour of sketches for the scrapbook albums to museums nationwide.

The New York State Museum, a cultural program of the New York State Department of Education, was founded on a tradition of scientific inquiry. Started in 1836, the museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. The state museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany. It is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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The New York State Museum is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.