Portrait of General Samuel Perry “Powhatan” Carter

  • Creator: Samuel M. Shaver (1816-1878)
  • Title: Portrait of General Samuel Perry “Powhatan” Carter
  • Date: ca. 1861
  • Description: This portrait depicts a dark-haired, bearded man in young middle age, wearing the uniform of a United States Brigadier General. He is shown in half-figure, seated next to a marble-topped table, holding a sword across his lap with his left hand and a cap in his right.
  • Historical Note: This portrait of Samuel P. Carter (1818-1891), who was born in Elizabethton, in upper East Tennessee, and graduated from the United States Naval Academy, shows him as a Union general at the beginning of the Civil War. Carter, who had taught mathematics at the Naval Academy, was a natural leader. He was granted a special appointment by the U.S. Army to organize a regiment of loyalists in East Tennessee. His brother, William B. Carter, helped to organize the November 1861 bridge burning campaign in East Tennessee in order to stymie Confederate forces moving through the state during the first year of the war. Artist Samuel Shaver (1816-1878) was one of East Tennessee's best-known portrait painters. Shaver lived in Rogersville before the war, where he taught art at the Odd Fellows Female Institute and painted portraits. When war broke out, Shaver, who favored the Confederacy, moved to Knoxville where he helped found the East Tennessee Art Association. The Association commissioned Shaver to paint portraits of fifteen Confederate leaders and generals. Shaver's accomplished portrait of Union General Carter is an example of the artist's neutrality during the war.
  • Institution: Tennessee State Museum
  • Publisher: Digital Initiatives, James E. Walker Library, Middle Tennessee State University
  • Rights: Images reproduced on this website are intended for individual, educational use only. For research inquiries about specific objects or requests for high resolution images, contact the Tennessee State Museum.
  • URL: http://cdm15838.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/shades
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