Custer
Here Fell Custer 1976,
acrylic on canvas
"Of the hundreds of depictions of Custer's
Last Stand, this painting rates as the most haunting and evocative
of what it must have been like at that moment on Custer Hill.
There is no glory here, only a dark landscape littered with death
and tragedy." -- Robert Utley, Historian and
Author
"Like most Last Stand art, Eric von Schmidt's
Here Fell Custer is haunting, but no rendition till Eric's
captured the true scale of the battlefield and with that, a visceral
sense of how it must have been for the soldiers. That, and the skill
with which he has rendered the qualities of confusion, strife, and
lost cause, is what makes his painting so disquieting. Unlike with
any other, the viewer has an instant sense of being there--the
realism is THAT real--and thus with it, the horror and hopelessness
Custer's men faced. We will never know what it was really like atop
that hill that day, but Eric von Schmidt, I think, has brought us
closer to the genuine actuality than anyone ever has and perhaps
ever will." Chuck Rankin, Senior Editor University of OK Press
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About "Here Fell Custer"
The original acrylic on canvas of "Here Fell
Custer" was completed in time for the centennial of the Battle of
the Little Bighorn and premiered in the June 1976 issue of
Smithsonian Magazine. The
National Park Service has now selected "Here Fell Custer" as the
official painting depicting the last stand in which five companies
of the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. George A. Custer
fought to their deaths against warriors of the Sioux and Cheyenne
nations. The painting is displayed on the wayside exhibit at Last
Stand Hill near where Custer fell as well as the NPS brochure.
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