CUSTER'S LAST RALLY
Went to-day to see this just-finish'd painting by John Mulvany, who
has been out in far Dakota, on the spot, at the forts, and among the
frontiersmen, soldiers and Indians, for the last two years, on purpose
to sketch it in from reality, or the best that could be got of it. Sat
for over an hour before the picture, completely absorb'd in the first
view. A vast canvas, I should say twenty or twenty-two feet by twelve,
all crowded, and yet not crowded, conveying such a vivid play of
color, it takes a little time to get used to it. There are no tricks;
there is no throwing of shades in masses; it is all at first painfully
real, overwhelming, needs good nerves to look at it. Forty or fifty
figures, perhaps more, in full finish and detail in the mid-ground,
with three times that number, or more, through the rest--swarms upon
swarms of savage Sioux, in their war-bonnets, frantic, mostly on
ponies, driving through the background, through the smoke, like a
hurricane of demons. A dozen of the figures are wonderful. Altogether
a western, autochthonic phase of America, the frontiers, culminating,
typical, deadly, heroic to the uttermost--nothing in the books like
it, nothing in Homer, nothing in Shakspere; more grim and sublime
than either, all native, all our own, and all a fact. A great lot
of muscular, tan-faced men, brought to bay under terrible
circumstances--death ahold of them, yet every man undaunted, not one
losing his head, wringing out every cent of the pay before they sell
their lives.
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