Jacked at ReTran USAA Closer Examination of the George Washington Painting by Arnold Frieberg
Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | American Heroism
So many paintings have been created purporting explicitly or implicitly to capture the true essence of General George Washington (President Bush’s Namesake!).
The merits by which one measures such quantitative attributes like “true” and “essence” are pretty well known. Most important of among the many merits are that the depictions should promote an unapologetically and placating sense of patriotism and cliché. The artist who has unquestionably achieved this to the maximum extent possible is Arnold Frieberg.
George Washington is known to really like his horse, and he is also known to really like praying. This is why Arnold imagined (quite plausibly) George forcing his horse to pray for the troops while he took care of some business.
As a devout Mormon, Frieberg was tapped by LDS Church authorities to create works of art depicting scenes from the Josephs Smiths’ Book of Mormon. These paintings are set in pre-colonial North and/or South America. They include imagery of soldiers decked out in roman and medieval style armor, swords, and other weaponry (but curiously no firearms). To relegate his Book of Mormon paintings as mere fantasy art, such works inspired by The Hobbit, is insulting to say the least. Frieberg was known to do quite a bit of historical research and due diligence when commissioning a painting, like his Valley Forge painting. Logically you would be strained to imply he did not do the same for the Book of Mormon paintings. It would be negligent to say he did not take into account the Myth of the Moundbuilders legend that was pervasive in America in the 1800s, because he obviously would have come across it. He would have taken into account that the idea that the Moundbuilders being anyone other than Native Americans using known indigenously developed Native American technology had been disproven year after year since the late 1800s. To sum up he would have used the same historical skills he employed constructing Book of Mormon based art on his Prayer at Valley Forge painting.
Historians are resoundingly in consensus that all the founding fathers: Washington, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin included, were deeply pious and religious in every sense of those words ring. Their religious statements of 200 years ago could be construed as if spoken today in today’s context, with no difference whatsoever. The Deists of 200 years ago, like Jefferson are completely analogous to people that fervently believe in God and are deeply religious today but subscribe to no single sect (like today’s evangelical inter-denominationalists). There are no detectable levels of ambivalence regarding the religious nature of Benjamin Franklin.
It is fortunate there were those courageous folks in the mid 20th century that sought to clarify the record on the extreme relgious nature of these great men called the Founding Fathers.
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