For more than one hundred and forty years, Henry Mosler’s painting The Lost Cause has
been an iconic presence in Southern culture, widely distributed as a
chromolithograph in the years after its creation and cherished for the
tender sense of loss it conveys.
The Lost Cause “takes as its subject the devastation of the war in the South as it affected, not the wealthy plantation owner, but rather the yeoman farmer of the highlands.” Mosler placed the sagging Confederate veteran—head bowed, leaning on his musket and awkwardly attired in heavy seasonal gear—outside a deserted log cabin. The dilapidated structure stands in a landscape teeming with the promise of spring, a powerful and poignant contrast to the soldier’s obvious despair.