Details
Contributor Chappel, Alonzo, 1828-1887, artist.
Chappel, Alonzo, 1828-1887, artist.
Johnson, Fry & Co., publisher.
Title Benj. F. Butler [graphic] : Likeness from the latest photograph from life. / Painted by Alonzo Chappel.
Publisher New York : Johnson, Fry & Co
Publisher N.Y. New York. 1863
Date [1863]
Physical Description 1 print : engraving ; sheet 29 x 22 cm (11.25 x 8.5 in.)
Description Full-length portrait of the Massachusetts governor, abolitionist legislator, and Civil War Major General. Butler, attired in his military uniform with a sword, sits beside a table covered in a patterned cloth. There are papers on the table and strewn on the floor. Butler, while commander at Fort Monroe, Virginia, declared African American freedom seekers as "contraband of war," providing the impetus for Congress to enact the Confiscation Act of 1861.
Notes Title from printed signature of sitter below image.
Published in Evert Duyckinck's National portrait gallery of eminent Americans:...(New York: Johnson, Fry & Company, 1861-1864), p. 423. (LCP Uz 3, 3333.Q).
During the Civil War, the U.S. government declared African American freedom seekers as "contraband of war."
Chappel painted a majority of the portraits published as engravings in biographer Evert Duyckinck's, "Portraits Galleries," of the 1860s and 1870s. He often copied the subject's faces from photographic portraits and placed them on generic bodies that he situated in more decorative surroundings than the original photograph.
Accessioned 1982.
Description revised 2021.
Access points revised 2021.
Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Subject Butler, Benjamin F. (Benjamin Franklin), 1820-1870 -- Portraits.
Generals -- American.
Governors -- Massachusetts.
Legislators -- Massachusetts.
Geographic subject United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Military personnel.
Genre Book illustrations -- 1860-1870.
Engravings -- 1860-1870.
Portrait prints -- 1860-1870.
Illustrator Chappel, Alonzo, 1828-1887, artist.
Printer Johnson, Fry & Co., publisher.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| portrait prints - Butler [P.8911.128]
Accession number P.8911.128