Focus on Statue of Albert Sidney Johnston (Texas State Cemetery) and analyze the Design and interpretation.
The statue depicts Johnston lying on a stretcher at the time of his death during the Battle of Shiloh.: 119–120  The figure is recumbent, dressed in the formal military uniform of a Confederate General. Johnston's eyes are closed, and his left arm is folded across his chest, while his right lies alongside him. The statue's legs are draped in a Confederate "Southern cross" battle flag, which hangs from a broken staff.: 205  The statue is protected from the elements by a plexiglas dome, which is then surrounded by a cream-colored wrought-iron enclosure with Gothic revival decorative elements (also designed by Ney).In designing Johnston, Ney aimed for a realistic effect, emphasizing naturalistic details in her composition. The sculpture includes the rough wooden litter and folded cloths on which the dying Johnston is meant to have been carried from the battle.: 119–120  During the work's development, representatives of the Daughters of the Confederacy pressed Ney to include more symbolic or allegorical elements, but Ney refused, insisting upon a scene which could in fact have occurred on the Shiloh battlefield. She did, however, intend the broken flagstaff to poetically suggest that the Confederacy's hopes of victory had been destroyed by Johnston's death.: 205 Ney designed the statue's enclosure with open ironwork bars and railings so that the tomb and statue would be visible from all sides without visitors having to enter the mausoleum. She included Gothic elements (such as pinnacles on the roofline, tracery on the gables, and crocket capitals on the corner columns) to give the site a solemn and religious quality. Ney also incorporated Texas lone stars into the Gothic tracery to mark Johnston's grave as a commemoration of a notable Texan.: 188–189
stretcher plexiglas Gothic revival gable wrought-iron tracery crocket capital left realistic recumbent pinnacle Battle of Shiloh "Southern cross" battle flag Confederate