The Sword over the Gown presentation has been cancelled

The portrait of Bishop Leonidas Polk by Eliphalet Andrews known as the Sword over the Gown was acquired in 1927. Eliphalet Andrews, the artist of the original work, was from Ohio, but made his way to Europe in 1859 to study... [ view full abstract ]

The portrait of Bishop Leonidas Polk by Eliphalet Andrews known as the Sword over the Gown was acquired in 1927. Eliphalet Andrews, the artist of the original work, was from Ohio, but made his way to Europe in 1859 to study painting at the Düsseldorf Academy in Germany. He ultimately settled in Washington, D.C. where he became a notable portrait painter and Director of the Corcoran School of Art. John Cox Underwood, a Confederate officer in the Civil War and the 21^st Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, commissioned Andrews to paint a group of fourteen full-length portraits of confederate leaders, including Polk, Stonewall Jackson, Stephen D. Lee, Albert Sidney, and several others. An article posted in The Sewanee Purple from May 1948 claims that the portrait of Polk was brought to Sewanee by Reverend James D. Gibson, who sold it to the University in ­­1927. The portrait was destroyed in 1998 and was replaced with a copy by Connie Erickson in 2003.

This semester I have been working on an independent study with Professor Mishoe Brennecke to expand on research conducted by Ryan Poole ’17. Poole focused his research on how the painting came to the University and its current position in our campus culture. However, little information is known about the portraitist and its commissioner. My research has been devoted to trying to bring to light as much information as possible that is critical to our understanding of these large portraits of confederate men. I have been seeking answers to questions about Underwood, his position in the arts, and how he came to select Andrews as the artist for these paintings. Also, what was Andrews’ connection, if any, to Underwood and the Confederacy? By way of collecting research on the people involved in this commission, I am hoping to discover connections between them that might give the University more insight into the history of the Polk portrait in our collection.