Oil painting of Famous Civil War Battle was Painted by a Susquehanna Valley Native

By Terry Diener

American painter Peter Frederick Rothermel spent several years to complete his painting of Pickett’s Charge, titled “Battle of Gettysburg.” It hangs in the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg. Governor Andrew Curtin, who was a native of Bellefonte, Centre County, commissioned the painting.

People may not know that Rothermel was also a Pennsylvania native, born in Nescopeck, Luzerne County, across the Susquehanna River from Berwick, Columbia County.

An April 19, 1935, story in the Berwick Enterprise newspaper reported Rothermel was born to Quaker parents on July 8, 1812. His German ancestors emigrated to the New World in 1730 and settled in Pennsylvania. His family traveled over the Blue Mountains of southern Pennsylvania and settled in Nescopeck, along the north branch of the Susquehanna.

Rothermel’s father conducted the Nescopeck Hotel, an important stop on the stage route that gave an outlet to Easton, and by way of the Delaware River to Philadelphia. Most “city goods” were brought to central Pennsylvania along this route.

Rothermel left Nescopeck with his parents when he was ten. At that early age, he had already shown skills as a painter, making sketches that attracted some attention. In later years, Rothermel reflected on his time in Nescopeck. “My early boyhood days were spent under the fine old elms, butternut, and walnut trees along the water’s edge, fishing, whittling shingles, making houses and going to school. Was I a good boy? I can’t say, but I never had a whipping and at the end of three months, I took a prize. Rather curiously it was a representation of a dead oak leaf by Thomas Miller. I do not know exactly how I came to draw and paint. My first impression was watching a house and sign painter of out of town, painting a black horse sign.” Rothermel continued, “My father was a hotel keeper, and my next feat was to paint for him a sign in good old dignified Roman letters in black on a white background.” 

Rothermel took up the study of art at the age of 22. He was instructed in drawing by John Rubens Smith, a London-born painter, printmaker, and instructor, and subsequently became a pupil of Bass Otis in Philadelphia. Otis painted hundreds of portraits including many of the best-known Americans of his day.

Rothermel later studied in Europe and after returning to the United States in 1859, he went to Philadelphia and was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he also taught notable artists of that era.

His Pickett’s Charge painting was completed in 1870 and had its public unveiling in Philadelphia on December 20, 1870. It is 16 feet high and 32 feet wide. The Public Ledger, a Philadelphia newspaper, was shown the painting before the opening: “In conception and execution it well deserves the praise it has largely received from competent art critics, at perhaps being the best as well as the largest war picture on this side of the Atlantic.”

Rothermel visited the battlefield on multiple occasions to make sketches and diagrams, spent hours poring over maps and official reports, and corresponded with dozens of battlefield veterans regarding virtually every aspect of the battle, from troop movements to clothing worn.

It’s reported that many of the prominent figures in the painting are actual likenesses. General Meade sat personally for the artist. Many of the soldiers in the battle asked to sit and did so. The scene is the third day of the battle and depicts Pickett’s charge.

Years after he had achieved his fame as a painter, Rothermel visited Nescopeck. The 1935 newspaper account says he spent several hours visiting the site of his birth and took trips around the town and the surrounding hills, in order to recall the scenes of his childhood.

Rothermel died August 15, 1895, at the age of 78 in Linfield, Montgomery County, thirty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia.

We must note that the Gettysburg Cyclorama contains a massive depiction of Pickett’s Charge created by French artist Paul Philippoteaux in 1883. In the book The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas, authors Chris Brenneman and Sue Boardman discuss in fascinating detail how the painting was interpreted by Civil War veterans in the late 19th Century. Brenneman and Boardman are licensed Gettysburg Battlefield guides. Sue Boardman is a native of Danville, Pennsylvania.