James Edward Buttersworth

Private Collection, New York

Acquired by descent from the above by the present owner

Rudolph J. Schaefer, J. E. Buttersworth: 19th-Century Marine Painter, Mystic, Connecticut, 1975, nos. 128-29, pp. 152-53, illustrated; pp. 252-53

This pair of paintings ranks among one of James Edward Buttersworth's few Civil War scenes, capturing the famed 1864 defeat of the Confederate warship USS Alabama by the Union USS Kearsarge. In sequence, they depict the Alabama striking her colors in surrender, then sinking as a British ship emerges from the left to assist the survivors, including the Alabama's captain Raphael Semmes. Breathlessly reported on and illustrated by the press, this naval engagement sparked the imaginations of a breadth of artists, including but not limited to Buttersworth and Édouard Manet.