The Scout's Return (Primary Title)
John Adams Elder, American, 1833 - 1895 (Artist)
A native of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Elder began his career as a painter at age seventeen, when he moved to New York City to study. In 1851, he traveled to Düsseldorf, Germany, to train with Emmanuel Leutze, painter of the famed Washington Crossing the Delaware (Metropolitan Museum of Art). After his return to America, Elder enlisted in the Confederate army and served as a private in Pickett's Brigade. In the postwar decades he lived in Richmond and painted portraits of military heroes as well as history and genre images.
The Scout's Return is likely based on Elder's memory of the specialized soldiers who secretly gathered information about the enemy's position and capabilities. Judging from the warm glow of the sun (settingon a vista suggestive of the Shenandoah Valley), the relaxed scout who enjoys his pipe, and the cheering troops who greet him, the reconnaissance mission appears to have gone well.
"Why the South Lost the Civil War," Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA, 27 October, 1988 - 20 March 1989.
"Art of the American West," Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artmobile, September 1977 - December 1978.
Thalheimer Exhibition, Jamestown Festival Park, Williamsburg, VA, June 1974.
"John Elder," Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA, April - May 1967.
"The Civil War: The Artists' Record," Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 18 November - 31 December, 1961; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1 February - 4 March 1962.
"A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of John Adams Elder, 1833-1895," Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 11 January - 5 February, 1947.
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