Generational Bravery

A boy with a rifle, a bearded man holding the flag high, and a gray-whiskered veteran gripping the staff beside him. The Civil War was fought by every age at once.

Union regiments were raised town by town, so brothers, cousins, fathers and sons often answered the same roll call. Boys who had lied about their age stood in the ranks with men old enough to be their grandfathers.

At Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, a 70-year-old local man named John Burns, who had fought in the War of 1812, went out to join the battle. He fought alongside the 7th Wisconsin and then the 24th Michigan, and he was wounded in the arm and the leg. That November, Abraham Lincoln came to town and asked to meet him.

The painting names no battle. It is about the old, the young and the man in between sharing the same ground. Smoke and orange fire fill the background, and more soldiers in kepis push forward through the haze. The flag is the brightest thing in the picture, its canton set with one large star ringed by smaller ones, lit above the bearer's upturned face. The palette is warm and muted, browns and dusky reds, like an old canvas seen by lamplight.