Neither signed nor dated by the artist, this is the painting Seth Eastman was completing when he died in 1875. The painting is unique in the series because the fort is not seen except at its perimeter gun placement. Instead, the viewer stands just above this small proscenium and looks out at a scene of the Hudson River. The setting was familiar to 19th-century Americans from the large number of paintings and prints of it already existing. West Point was not an active fort at this time. In 1802, after its crucial Revolutionary War role in preventing a British advance down the river to New York City, West Point became a military academy under the patronage of President Thomas Jefferson.

Even before the Civil War, West Point had become a tourist destination because of its fame, its proximity to New York City, and its picturesque location. In the painting, a woman, escorted by a cadet, tours the grounds. This work, alone among the fort paintings, shows some military activity–-the cadets are learning to prepare a cannon for firing. An officer-instructor stands second from the left; two boys ram the charge home in the large cannon’s barrel. Two smaller pieces of ordnance are also shown. But it is the Hudson River, its high banks framing the water where pleasure boats cruise, that draws the eyes away from the busy foreground and into the serene distance.

During the late 18th century and through much of the 19th century, army forts were constructed throughout the United States to defend the growing nation from a variety of threats, both perceived and real. Seventeen of these sites are depicted in a collection painted especially for the U.S. Capitol by Seth Eastman. Born in 1808 in Brunswick, Maine, Eastman found expression for his artistic skills in a military career. After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where officers-in-training were taught basic drawing and drafting techniques, Eastman was posted to forts in Wisconsin and Minnesota before returning to West Point as assistant teacher of drawing. Eastman also established himself as an accomplished landscape painter, and between 1836 and 1840, 17 of his oils were exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York City. His election as an honorary member of the academy in 1838 further enhanced his status as an artist.

Transferred to posts in Florida, Minnesota, and Texas in the 1840s, Eastman became interesed in the Native Americans of these regions and made numerous sketches of the people and their customs. This experience prepared him for the next five yeas in Washington, D.C., where he was assigned to the commissioner of Indian Affairs and illustrated Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's important six-volume Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. During this time Eastman also assisted Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, superintendent of the Capitol extension, in securing the services of several Native Americans to model for the sculptors working on the 1850s addition to the building.

In 1867 Eastman returned to the Capitol, this time to paint a series of nine scenes of Native American life for the House Committee on Indian Affairs. Eastman's talent and his special knowledge of the subject certainly qualified him for the commission, which was obtained for him by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Robert C. Schenck of Ohio. Schenck, a former Civil War officer who, like Eastman, was retired for disability during the war, believed Amerian–-not European–-artists should recieve the Capitol commissions. In introducing a resolution urging the hiring of Eastman for the project, Schenck remarked:

We have been paying for decorations, some displaying good taste and others of tawdry character, a great deal of money to Italian artists and others, while we have American talent much more competent for the work. Among others . . . is General Eastman, who . . . is more of an artist in all that relates to the Indians, except possibly Catlin and Stanley, than any we have had in this country. . . . If assigned to this duty General Eastman will draw his full pay as lieutenant colonel, instead of as on the retired list, making a difference of about $1,200 or $1,500 a year. For at the most $1,500 a year we will secure service for which we have been paying tens of thousands of dollars to foreign artists, and we will get better work done. [1]

Schenck's resolution was approved by the House but tabled by the Senate. Nevertheless, the retired Eastman was placed–-by special order of the War Department–-on "active duty" so that he could be compensated for creating works of art for the Capitol. He finished the nine paintings in 1869.

In 1870 House Military Affairs Committee Chairman John A. Logan of Illinois proposed that Eastman produce 17 canvases depicting army forts. It is indicative of the post-Civil War sentiment in America that Logan specified that Eastman was not to paint battle scenes; indeed, the mood of these forts set in landscapes is serene, even nostalgic to some degree. Never a well man, Eastman was aged and ailing by the time he received the commission, and it is not known if he visited the forts. He had been stationed at several of these during his military career, and as a trained topographical draftsman he probably had plans, elevations, and even photographs of the forts at his disposal. Eastman completed the series between 1870 and 1875.

Charles E. Fairman, longtime curator of the Capitol, was slightly dismissive of Eastman's fort paintings. He thought they were "probably more valuable as examples of historical accuracy . . . than for purely decorative purposes." [2] He explained that it was important that knowledge concerning government fortifications should be easily accessible and these pictures "contain desired information and also relieve acceptably what might otherwise be blank spaces upon an uninteresting wall." [3] Yet without touting Eastman's paintings as masterpieces, it is still possible to value them as considerably more than repositories of "desired information."

For many years, the fort paintings hung in the House Military Affairs Committee Room, first in the Capitol and later in the Cannon House Office Building. During the late 1930s, they were returned to the Capitol for public display. Of the 17 paintings, eight are located in the Senate, while the others are displayed on the House side of the Capitol. Eastman was working on the West Point painting when he died in 1875.


1. Congressional Globe (26 March 1867) 40th Cong., 1st sess.: 362.

2. Charles E. Fairman, Art and Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1927), 239

3. Ibid.