On January 17, 2018 I was invited by the United States Capitol Historical Society to deliver a lunchtime lecture on soldier-artist Set Eastman (1809-1875), and a series of paintings he produced between 1870 and 1875, entitled The Principal Fortifications of the United States.

Link: https://www.c-span.org/video/?439843-1/artist-seth-eastmans-military-fort-paintings

My article on the subject will be forthcoming in the Summer issue of The Capitol Dome magazine. Eastman came to my attention in the early 1990s when I was in the midst of exploring and painting Civil War battlefields threatened by residential development and sprawl commerce. Little-known among painters today, Eastman gained renown first as “the pictorial historian of the Indian”, illustrating Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s massive ethnographic study of the indigenous peoples of North America. Eastman and his wife collaborated on a trade book about Native American life and lore in what is now the state of Minnesota. Mary Henderson Eastman’s 1849 Dahcotah, or Life And Legends Of The Sioux Around Fort Snelling, found its way into the library of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was one of the principal inspirations for his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha.

Fort Knox, Maine. 1870-1875