Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1052459
Fig. 22. Seth Eastman, West Point, New York, 1875. knowledge enhanced his ability to employ imagina- tion, which he did to great effect in his view of Fort Michilimackinac. West Point and Fort Snelling without question are two places the adult Eastman knew best. One can imagine his emotional attachment to these places, where as a junior officer he met, married, and abandoned his first wife, only to return eight years later with a new bride, growing family, and command of the post. Eastman never denied his Indian daughter or her family. When Nancy Eastman died after giving birth to his grandson, her Santee Dakota husband adopted the Eastman surname and gave it to his children, whose descendants carry the name to this day. Evening descended on the last day of August 1875. In one of the rooms of a modest row-house in Washing- ton, D.C., a new painting rested on an easel. The scene was one the artist knew well (fig. 22). Nearing twi- light, cadets practiced gunnery-drill at Knox's Battery. Others met their sweethearts at Land's End, as he and Mary once had done. Gazing across Constitution Island toward the Highlands' North Gate, Storm King rises up to the left. Across the river, the haunted island stands offshore, just beyond Breakneck Mountain. Newburg Bay stretches northward, into the distance. Mount Taurus looms above Little Stony Point, beside the spires of Cold Spring, the foundry, and the marsh across the river from Crow's Nest. It had been as if the painting had made itself. He had but to hold the brush, as these landmarks brought Seth Eastman home to West Point, to Thayer, Gimbrede, and Weir, to the girl from Virginia, to the Long Gray Line, to the beloved stamp- ing-grounds of his youth. Palette and brushes lay nearby. A ghostly vapor of turpentine, varnish, and linseed oil hung in the air, but the painter's chair was empty. Care- fully having put the finishing touches on his last work, Eastman lay down to rest. Years of hard service had aged him well beyond his 67 years. Closing his eyes, he drifted away to report to his final post. His had been a remarkable life that today is worthy of further study. 28 THE CAPITOL DOME