In Atlanta, a Civil War painting stops stretching the truth
When Tim Crimmins, way back in 1973, first saw “The Battle of Atlanta,” a towering wraparound picture of 60,000 soldiers in gray and blue clashing over the fate of a nation, he elbowed a friend.
“There’s no enemy on the battlefield,” he told him, chuckling. “There are only good guys fighting good guys.”
Created in 1886 by German artists using lantern projectors, the giant panoramic painting shows a broken and bloody battlefield, the 1864 Battle of Atlanta. It became a familiar school trip for generations of Georgians, one that was tinged with the mythmaking of the defeated Confederacy and the idea of a “Lost Cause.”
“This painting has meant so many things to so many different people throughout the course
The Imax of the Gilded AgeForget me not
