"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Friday, November 5, 2021

Robert E. Lee

This chromolithograph of the famous Confederate General is part of a cigar box label by the O. L. Schwencke, Lithograph Co.  This particular instance seems to have be stuck on a blank page in the copy of Gen. Robert Edward Lee; Soldier, Citizen, and Christian Patriot by  R. A. Brock,  1897, which now appears in Internet Archive

Fabrica de Tobacos
Robáµ— E. Lee



It shows Lee not as the gray bearded general of the Civil War but as a brown haired colonel of 1859-60 or so. This small picture also from Brock 1897 matches Lee's look on the cigar label pretty well.  
 
Col. Robert E. Lee in 1859

A that time Lee was a colonel of cavalry in Texas as the label on this photo, from Brock 1897, indicates.
 
Robert E. Lee, Lieutenant-Colonel of Second Cavalry
Fort Brown, Texas, 1860

Appleton's Cyclopedia has a similar image of Colonel Lee.



Contrast those with this chromolithograph of Robert E. Lee in civilian clothes after 1865 by James Fuller Queen. 



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