Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth - Hardcover

Shirley A. Leckie (author)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806125012 ISBN 13: 9780806125015

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993

Synopsis

Unprecedented in size and scope, this special issue of Western Passages celebrates the full range of the western American art holdings at the Denver Art Museum. Published to mark the tenth anniversary of the museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art, Elevating Western American Art: Developing an Institute in the Cultural Capital of the Rockies includes thirty essays by art historians from across the United States and Canada as well as a comprehensive history of the growth of Denver’s impressive collection of art of the American West.More than twenty of the museum’s undisputed masterworks are discussed in detail, from George Catlin’s Cutting Ceremony and Charles Deas’s Long Jakes to Frederic Remington’s The Cheyenne and Charles Russell’s In the Enemy’s Country. Unique among its peers in being a dedicated western American art department within an encyclopedic museum, the Petrie Institute is able to draw on the resources of other museum departments to provide a broad context for its holdings. Essays by Denver Art Museum curators on objects that relate to western American art but are displayed and cared for in other museum departments—a portion of a New Mexican altarpiece, a magnificent Native American coat, a Japanese woodblock print depicting Yosemite—demonstrate both the inclusive nature of the Petrie Institute’s approach and the fact that western American art stubbornly and gloriously refuses to be fenced in by traditional art historical boundaries. Special attention is paid, as well, to contemporary artists of western American art, whose work is generously represented in the book’s more than 250 color illustrations.This highly collectible book—an essential addition to any art library—is a testament to the artists whose work it so handsomely portrays and to the many benefactors, staff, and supporters, over a period of more than a hundred years, who have made it possible for western American art to find a home at the Denver Art Museum.

About this title

About the Author

Shirley A. Leckie, Professor of History at the University of Central Florida, is the author of Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth and Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian.

From the Back Cover

George Armstrong Custer's death in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn left Elizabeth Bacon Custer a thirty-four-year-old widow whose debts greatly out-weighed her financial resources. By the time she died - fifty-seven years later, on Park Avenue - she had achieved economic security, recognition as an author and lecturer, and the respect of numerous public figures. Furthermore, she had built the Custer legend, an idealized image of her husband as "a boy's hero": a brilliant military commander, a solid Christian, a patriot, and a family man without personal failings. Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth explores this complex woman and her role in creating the Custer myth. A true nineteenth-century woman whose religious fervor had been reinforced by attendance at two female seminaries, Elizabeth (known to friends and family as "Libbie") entered her marriage determined to convert her flamboyant husband and raise children who would become "cornerstone(s) in the great church of god". But the marriage, while passionate, brought neither the children she desired nor the idyllic happiness she later described. Military life was a struggle: at times the couple suffered lengthy separations; other times Libbie endured the privations of life on frontier posts to be near her husband. Libbie tolerated his marital infidelities and gambling, though not without complaint or flirtations of her own. Through it all, Libbie contributed to George Armstrong Custer's advancement far more than has been recognized. After his death, Libbie's crusade to honor him affirmed the middle-class domestic and patriotic values she held, and these were, in turn, used to justify the conquest of AmericanIndians. Not until Libbie died did historians and military leaders feel free to re-evaluate the actions and character of General Custer. Extensively researched and unflinchingly honest, this is the first comprehensive treatment of Elizabeth Bacon Custer's remarkable life. She willingly adhered to the social, religious, and sex-role restrictions of her day, yet used her authority as model wife and widow to influence events and ideology far beyond the private sphere. From the facts of her life emerges a story no less compelling than the legend of General Custer.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806125012
• ISBN 13: 9780806125015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 444