Long Lost Photograph of Lee…?!
A great example recently occurred re: faked photographs being thrown at us on social media. I follow several Civil War pages, no surprise. One of the pages posted an image of Gen. Robert E. Lee and his horse, Traveller, with the caption “long lost photograph of Lee.” I started looking at the comments. People were falling for it. Some did note it looked like Lee was on the cell phone; it does look that way. No, he’s not talking on the cell phone.
Other than the phone, I knew something was wrong because Lee would never slouch like that; his mama would have haunted him if he slouched like that!
Knowing he never slouched, and being familiar with a majority of his photographs, I reasoned, it must be an artist rendition of a scene. Yes, it’s a painting, not a photograph. You just need 10 seconds, maybe 20 seconds, to study the photograph. If you still aren’t sure, google the image. I googled “Lee and Traveller.” The painting popped up. I wasn’t familiar with the painting.
On a personal note, I didn’t say anything in the Facebook comments nor will I. I don’t engage much in the comments.
No one stayed slouched long enough in Ye Goode Olde Days for this to be a photo. Now the one with Lincoln arriving in Gettysburg in the self driving Tesla, that’s just reeks of authenticity!
This was resolved quickly on Facebook, as people very familiar with portraits and photos of Lee weighed in. The main giveaway was that very few photos were taken of Confederates in the field at all, much less of Lee. It’s a painting, and it’s not a painting from life. It didn’t show up in a google search; no idea the location of the painting and/or its creator has been identified. Interestingly, there is a famous photo of Lee on Traveller that was taken in 1868 by photographer Michael Miley; the “Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection” seems to offer an opportunity to add a copy of a postcard featuring “this famous painting” to your collection. They do note that the postcard was created “1955-1970”. It’s also misidentified on the University of Kentucky website, as “created by “Samuel Perkins Gilmore,1868-1948”. A precocious photographer.
I’ll take the ‘photo’ of Bill Sherman with the F-14 Tomcat flying by anytime!
In this painting, Traveller looks rather like the dead horse photographed at Antietam.
Thats why the horse looked so familiar! Thanks!
It is a painting but it’s actually based on a lost photograph taken when Lee was captured at Gettysburg.
This is an example of “engagement bait.” The more Facebook users comment, even negatively (“hey, that’s not a photo!”) the more the anonymous and often off-shore creators artificially massage their Facebook algorithms, game the system, and set themselves up for profit or scamming responders.
It is most definitely a painting. I recently had a conversation with a guy on CWT about it compared to other paintings. Considering it is so obviously a painting–and you don’t have to be an artist to tell–makes this even the more baffling.
There is also a popular fake declaration by Jeff Davis that’s popular on the internet.
The Lee “photo” may be a fake, but I have the only photograph of Jesus on the cross. Send me $10 and I’ll send you a copy.