American Historical Ephemera & Photography

"And 'twill live in song and story, Though its folds are in the dust." Watercolor. 10 1/2 x 15 3/8 in. (light toning, very minor brown spots, some chipping to edges, matted and partially affixed along top edge to mat with archival tape). A watercolor painting featuring the "conquered banners:" the first flag of the Confederate States, the "Battle Flag" adopted after the First Battle of Bull Run, the "National Flag" used by the Confederate States from 1 May 1863, and the "national Flag" used by the Confederacy from 4 March 1865. With a quote from the poem "The Conquered Banner" by Confederate Army chaplain Abram J. Ryan. Written after Lee's surrender at Appomattox and first published in the pro-Confederate Catholic newspaper the New York Freeman. It became enormously popular in the post-war South, especially in the period from 1890-1920 when the "Lost Cause" ideology gained momentum

Flags of the Confederacy. N.p.: Dixie W. Leach, 1910. 9 x 13 in. hand-colored lithograph (toned, small areas of abrasion, chipping, matted and partially affixed to mat along top edge). A hand-colored lithograph with a near-identical design of the same four flags and verse. 

Dixie Washington Leach (1861-1938), was a graduate of Cooper Union Women's Art School in New York and became a prolific artist and publisher in North Carolina. Prints of Leach's work was advertised continuously in the Confederate Veteran including a notice from the Robert E. Lee Calendar company of Raleigh, NC which touted "Perfect reproduction from water-color painting by Miss Dixie W. Leach, issued both as picture or calendar (Vol XVI, 1908, p. xiii. 

Provenance: Hindman Auctions, Lot 213, American Historical Ephemera and Photography, 25 June 2021.