Custer (his hair cut short stands in the middle), with
dilated eye and extended arm, aiming a huge cavalry pistol. Captain
Cook is there, partially wounded, blood on the white handkerchief
around his head, aiming his carbine coolly, half kneeling--(his
body was afterwards found close by Custer's.) The slaughter'd or
half-slaughter'd horses, for breastworks, make a peculiar feature.
Two dead Indians, herculean, lie in the foreground, clutching their
Winchester rifles, very characteristic. The many soldiers, their faces
and attitudes, the carbines, the broad-brimm'd western hats, the
powder-smoke in puffs, the dying horses with their rolling eyes
almost human in their agony, the clouds of war-bonneted Sioux in the
background, the figures of Custer and Cook--with indeed the whole
scene, dreadful, yet with an attraction and beauty that will remain
in my memory. With all its color and fierce action, a certain Greek
continence pervades it. A sunny sky and clear light envelop all.
There is an almost entire absence of the stock traits of European war
pictures. The physiognomy of the work is realistic and Western. I only
saw it for an hour or so; but it needs to be seen many times--needs to
be studied over and over again. I could look on such a work at brief
intervals all my life without tiring; it is very tonic to me; then it
has an ethic purpose below all, as all great art must have. The artist
said the sending of the picture abroad, probably to London, had been
talk'd of.
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